


Something New, Something Better

by so_dunwall



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Fluff and Smut, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Other, Post-DotO, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-01-08 09:08:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 48
Words: 101,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12251310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_dunwall/pseuds/so_dunwall
Summary: Corvo Attano arrives in Karnaca to reunite with a love he thought was lost.  He finds an unlikely family gathered around him as they face a city in crisis.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here's an introductory chapter of this super-extended epilogue I'm writing to sort out all my DOTO feels. There will be Corvosider, and it will be hella explicit eventually. There will be rampant domesticity, coffee and whiskey consumed by the gallon, some heartfelt tears, several Important Hugs, and a man who used to be a god learning that sometimes, even if they leave scars, old wounds do heal.
> 
> I want him to have a good life. Here's to trying to write him one.

Together, they made their way down the mountain.

There was still a road to follow, however disused. That was good, Billie thought, because she wasn’t so certain her companion was ready for mountaineering on his first day out. He was so starkly pale under the sunlight that Billie found herself squinting when she looked at his face. Reaching the treeline was the only thing preventing the sun from burning him to a crisp, but fortunately that didn’t take too long. The slopes of Shindaerey Peak were lushly forested, and soon they were under a canopy of leaves, surrounded by tall trees with massive trunks and the chirping conversations of innumerable birds.

They didn’t talk much. At first Billie wasn’t sure how she’d keep from driving the man crazy with an endless stream of questions. But she found that for so many of them, the moment she posed one in her head, she already knew the answer.

The Eye had shown her much.

She’d been about to ask him about her arm, but she’d ended up biting her tongue. “The world was wounded around you,” he’d said. Cryptic little shit. Now she knew what he’d meant. She knew that as strange and even violent as what he’d done had been, he had stopped reality from eventually healing itself by rejecting her utterly, negotiating a strange sort of compromise between her, it, and the Void. And all in a way that still left her with a hand, and an eye, she could use. Annoyingly, he’d explained himself as adequately as he probably could have.

She also knew that the street brawl from her dreams had been real. In a different version of the world, that was trying to exist concurrently with this one. And that the strange hollows she saw were other places where those two existences diverged enough to clash and flicker.

Somebody should probably do something about those.

The man who had once been the Outsider stumbled now and then, but he managed better than she’d expected. Billie offered a hand when he seemed to need one, and he accepted graciously, but he never asked, and he never complained.

They camped when the sun was setting. Billie caught herself apologizing for them having to sleep on the ground only to get an odd look from the man that made her go silent. She ended up building a small campfire while he swept a clear stretch of ground for them. They shared a tin of brined hagfish that Billie had packed, split the last of her canteen between them, and then they slept with their backs against one-another’s. 

By noon the next day they made it to the outskirts of Karnaca. Billie was dusty, thirsty, ravenous for a real, hot meal, and however her companion felt, he still said nothing. But while she walked with her head down, avoiding people’s gazes, he... didn’t. 

He looked at everyone. He recognized everyone. He met people's eyes with his own, and he seemed interested in every last one of them. Every porter and laborer, every messenger, street-sweeper, and loiterer. That interest came with a brazen familiarity that got him odd looks in return. He either didn’t notice, or didn’t care, but Billie felt her skin bristling from all the attention. At least she knew no one ever seemed to notice the arm, except for people who were Void-touched. And those who were had every reason to keep their mouths shut.

“You know there are bounties out on my head and I’m not exactly… inconspicuous.”

“Does it make you invisible if I don’t make eye contact?”

“It makes me _feel_ better.”

“Ah.” Quiet, but he sounded contrite. More importantly, he kept his head down. But a moment later he stopped and tapped her elbow, indicating for her to pause. The air was full of the smell of something cooking; something savory, with garlic and onions and a wealth of herbs.

“Let’s have lunch,” he said. He aimed them towards a narrow side street, and walked to a matronly woman hanging her laundry as if he were her long lost son.

The way she greeted them he might as well have been. A wide smile, and round rosy cheeks like apples.

“I don’t mean to trouble you,” he said. “But my friend and I just came down from the mountain and the meal on your stove smells better than a Palace banquet. If you can spare--”

“Oh my soul, what a dear you are, what a thing to say to a silly old woman! And I thought the young men today had all forgotten manners! Of course, of course you can have a bowl, one for each of you, I always cook too much when my Angus is up at the logging camp,” she patted her belly meaningfully, laughter in her smile as she guided them inside. She urged them both to have a seat at the table while she ladled them some stew.

“No one on this street goes hungry,” the man said as he sat down across from Billie, their hostess in the next room. “Susan Rooney gets as much nourishment from filling other people's’ bellies as she does from filling her own. All her neighbors call her the district’s best cook. Any one of them would choose one of her ‘peasant’ meals over a whole ocean of oysters and caviar.”

Then there were bowls in front of them both, and Susan broke a loaf of fresh, dark bread in half for them, and slid a clay crock of fresh butter across the table. “Piece of luck you came by today! Tomorrow I’ll be in the Battista district, giving Lucia a hand. There’s no meat in the stew but plenty of everything else, beef sets off my gout something terrible and with my boys all out of the nest I got to keep on my feet.”

The woman rambled, jovial, and Billie thought her voice was like the light streaming in through the window behind her, lighting the motes of dust in the air. Or the sheen of gnarled old wood on the surface of the farmhouse table in front of her, worn smooth through years of use more than a carpenter’s plane and sandpaper. It made a stranger’s house feel like home, a weird and precious thing when Billie had felt like an interloper everywhere she’d gone for most of her vagrant life.

That must have gone double for her companion. There was a hint of stiffness in his posture as he set his spoon to the stew, his face as intense as ever until the flavor hit his tongue. Then his expression went almost blank, like a moment of epiphany, a revelation as piercing as the moment when she had touched the Eye. All over a bite of real food.

Susan set down big earthenware mugs full of cider for both of them. “Got no ice,” the woman apologized, “But the cellar keeps coo-- Oh dear. Are you crying? How hungry _are_ you, poor soul!”

“It’s very good,” the man said, his voice hoarse. His shoulders were shaking. And Billie saw something on his face that looked like it was fighting to be a smile. Just before his face disappeared against Susan’s ample, aproned bosom. The matron stroked his hair with her plump hands, knuckles dimpled and rosy as her cheeks, and she whispered to him, gentle shushes, while he didn’t make a sound. He just leaned in against her, hands laying half-open on the table, trembling. Billie took one of them with her own.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Billie Lurk and a gentleman who has yet to give his name visit a historic landmark, move into a two bedroom loft (unfurnished), and Ms. Lurk takes on some odd jobs of dubious nature.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Citrusmewtwist and Abyssdreams (tumblrs, both) for beta reading and helpful feedback. Blocking dialogue when one of the main characters insists on remaining anonymous is a fucking trip let me tell you.

In the end, Billie decided the Battista District was the safest option. What Lucia Pastor referred to as the “Fallen Poor” were arriving there by the dozen, and her new companion would hardly be noticed. As for her own conspicuousness, she had plenty of experience dealing with that, and she knew the district well, every bolthole and hidden garret. And to top it all off, they would be practically on Aramis Stilton’s doorstep, if everything _did_ suddenly go to shit.

But in most of Karnaca, everybody seemed to have plenty of troubles of their own. Not exactly wonderful to contemplate, but it worked in their favor.

What surprised Billie was when her companion made a request of her, steered her down a street near some old bank building under heavy renovations. And they stood together in front of a humble building with a bronze plaque on the facade.

Lord Corvo Attano,  
made Royal Protector in 1817,  
was born here on the 25th day,  
Month of Nets, 1798.

It rankled, and for a moment Billie glared. “Are you bringing me here to contemplate past sins? I hoped we were past that,” she snapped.

“I won’t stop you, if that’s what you want,” he said. He stepped forward to touch the metal, feel the cast letters under his fingertips.

Billie bit back her bitterness, let it go with a sigh. “Right,” she said. And after a moment of familiar silence, she asked, “So what is he to you?”

The man turned, leaned his back against the wall beside the plaque. “Along with the scars of what Daud did to him, Corvo Attano wears my Mark. You gave him every motivation to send you both to your graves, and every last Whaler with you. And I gave him the opportunity.”

“You know you _could_ still be locked in a rock in the center of the Void? You do _remember_ that?”

That got Billie an odd, wan smile. With maybe a hint of contrition in his now greenish eyes. “Billie Lurk, every moment I breathe I will remember that.” He paused, spending a quiet moment just looking at her. It made her uncomfortable. Not the way his black-eyed gaze had. It was a more mundane awkwardness. “You spared me. Daud spared you. Corvo spared Daud. A chain of mercy, forged link by fragile link.”

“I think I get what you’re saying.” The way violence had momentum. The way somebody had to plant their feet, like trying to bear up under a landslide, and say ‘no more.’ The way making choices could be like literally _making_ something, digging out a channel with raw and blistered hands because the beaten path led somewhere you never wanted to go.

“I know you do,” he said, pushing away from the wall.

“Did you want him to kill us, when you marked him?”

“I’ve never given much thought to what I want. No one else ever has, however much they clamor about wanting to know.”

“I want to know.”

“Then…” He paused to think, pacing away from the plaque, turning to face it. “What I wanted was to see what he would do. There was a bloody path laid out in front of him. I gave him the means to walk it. But I also knew the man he had been before. I wondered if that man had died with the Empress, or sometime during hours of torture and weeks of starvation in Coldridge Prison. I wondered if he would see any value in something as abstract as ‘honor’-- as being _that man_ \-- when there was blood on his name and a deep, aching wound on his soul.”

“So he was some kind of Natural Philosophy experiment for you?”

“You don’t approve.” Bafflingly, the man seemed glad for that.

“Of course not! You could have comforted him! You could have... I don’t know, there had to be something!”

With that, the man really did look contrite. “I gave him the echo of the Empress’s spirit to guide him. I saw it more as necessity than kindness. But to Corvo it was a bittersweet comfort. An echo can feel even less than what I could, but she also felt a sort of gratitude. She understood.”

Bittersweet comfort. The old rat-relic in Billie’s breast pocket. Deirdre, the name that still rode out on every sigh she ever breathed. 

Even a love lost can be something that sustains you.

They meandered back down the street the way they’d came. Corners turned, a narrow side street, a darkened doorway. A brass key turning in the lock, and three flights of stairs to the attic loft. There was barely anything inside. Cobwebs and a thin layer of silver dust over everything. A window facing a direction that would catch plenty of morning sun but for now showed a sky turning deep cerulean with twilight. A wrought iron fire escape outside an old, cracked door in the far wall. They had their own bathroom, a tiny kitchen in one corner. No fireplace, but an extra pot bellied stove to warm the room. Even some fuel for it, split logs stacked beside it. It was getting close to the time of year they would need it.

Billie gave the man the spare key. They didn’t trade any words about rent or coin, but she told him that if he chose to leave, to let her know if he intended to come back. Or if he didn’t.

Then she left. There was a lot to do if this was going to become their home, even a temporary one. They needed beds. They needed food. Billie would need work.

In the Flooded District, in the Old Days, “work” only ever meant one thing. Billie had been proud to call herself one of the best at that thing. Her mind was as sharp as the blade she carried, her body had that same lethality, slender and hard, honed with her skill. 

There was so much about it she loved. The way her pulse raced. The impish pleasure in treading in places she shouldn’t, knowing things people tried to keep hidden. But she didn’t love the “work” anymore: the bloodshed, the killing.

She remembered the days after that last job. The last days of the Whalers, her last days in Dunwall for a long, long time. Some of the Whalers -- novices, mostly -- whispered behind Daud’s back that he’d ‘lost the stomach’ for the work. But she’d been pretty certain his stomach had nothing to do with it any more than hers did now. She had shed a river of blood to reach the Void on Shindaerey Peak, and left another in her wake in the Royal Conservatory. She hadn’t suddenly become squeamish. It wasn’t her stomach; it wasn’t the blood, the shit, the screaming.

It was the closing books, the final breaths, that sad and sorry sense of loss. None of those people would ever have a chance to make a better choice.

No more links on that fragile chain.

So when she went to the black market’s back alley shop, she asked the blonde woman there for other jobs.

“Didn’t you used to work in the Cyria gardens?” 

The woman had a familiar face, narrow but pretty, with cagey blue eyes. 

“Yeah. The whole district is crawling with Overseers right now because of the Cienfuegos murder. Richer purses don’t mean much if the Abbey comes knocking. They don’t make arrests, these days.”

Billie nodded with grim understanding.

“You sure you don’t want something a little higher tier?” The woman slid a couple torn papers across the till. It was a remarkably polite way of saying she knew damn well who, and what, Billie was.

Billie appreciated the politeness. She just shook her head. “Not right now. Like you said, the Abbey’s riled up like an anthill somebody kicked over. It’s a bad gamble.”

The woman let out a short chuckle. “Rumor is, you’re the one who did the kicking.” She sounded like she respected that, in a wary sort of way.

“Nobody saw nothing.” Billie smiled. Too bad she couldn’t wink with just one eye.

“’Course not.” The woman flashed a grin. “Name’s Reese,” she said. “If you’re working out of Battista for a while, maybe we’ll see each-other again.”

Billie looked over the job sheets as she left. Simple, petty burglaries. Running goods up from the docks for smugglers. Finding things for the Black Market. There was enough for a full night, and Billie went home tired with a fat purse full of coin.

The man had waited up for her. He was sitting with his back against the wall in the main room. It looked like he’d been out, himself. He had a pen and ink , a journal, and a few old cloth-bound books. There were a few stubby candles set around him to give him light while he wrote. He had dark circles under his eyes, and a relieved expression when he saw her walk through the door.

She blinked owlishly at him with her one good eye, tired enough that her mind felt sluggish. “Don’t tell me you thought something was going to happen to me. I can see through walls and I have a _magic knife that kills gods._ “

The man said nothing, but she saw his cheeks turn faintly pink.

But what reason did he have to have much faith in the world, or the future from one minute to the next. Billie turned her head and saw that the kitchen wasn’t empty anymore. There was fruit on the counter, not all of it the finest or freshest, but it was something. Bread, tins of various things, a can of ground coffee, a big bottle of Orbon rum. And some old, dented pots and pans, chipped plates and bowls. Enough to cook a meal.

“You’ve been busy,” Billie said.

“Scavenging is easier than I remember. It helps to know everything.”

Billie rolled her eye. So smug, so soon. She picked up a pear and bit into it. It was soft, overripe but not rotten yet. She watched the man pensively while she chewed. “I didn’t want to bother you about it, but you still haven’t given me your name. I guessed, since it had been stolen, you might’ve wanted to just… hold onto it for a little while.”

He nodded to her. Solemn and completely earnest. It was strange. It was disarming. Billie grabbed another pear and sat down next to him. She offered the fruit and he took it with a slow sigh.

“There’s someone waiting for me. Someone holding a debt that I need to settle. It was just an empty promise when we made it, but now it’s more.”

Billie blinked. “You owe it to somebody else? Somebody other than the person who saved your damned skin?”

He flustered, just the smallest bit, just for an instant before he took a huge bite out of his pear and turned utterly somber again. “It can’t be mine to give unless it’s mine to keep.”

“Alright.” Billie said. She smiled and it was crooked but gentle, and to whatever extent the man had his hackles up, he eased again.

“I can accept an alias, if you have one for me.”

“I’ll think about it. Until then I hope you’re alright with more ‘hey, you’. Or ‘li’l shit,’ depending.”

He stared, lips slightly pursed together. “Depending on?”

“How cryptic you’re being, and how fucking annoying it is.”

“That’s only fair.”

“Glad you see it my way.”

Billie had to wonder who, out there in the world, was that important to him and why.


	3. Interlude 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 5th day, Month of Rain, 1852. Corvo Attano receives an unexpected visitor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The interludes take place before the conclusion of Death of the Outsider. There will be probably two more of these coming. I wrote these to help me understand the former Outsider's state of mind in the present. Not especially smutty (yet) but here's the corvosider you signed up for.

The day the Empire commemorated the fallen Overseers who had lost their lives trying to overthrow the coup, the skies were clear and the sun was almost brutally bright. Emily kept her remarks brief, while the aristocrats and the wealthy fanned themselves under the midday heat. 

When it was done, Corvo stayed after, paying his silent respects to Yul Khulan. He hadn’t always seen eye to eye with the Head Overseer, but they had considered one another friends. He had been a reasonable man, a moderate, who tried to make the Abbey’s influence on the Empire a positive one.

None of the Vice Overseers presiding approached him. Their faces were so stoney they may as well have been masked like the rank and file. They had suspected him of heresy for years, but rather than convincing them that he and the Empress were allies, the coup had made the Abbey even more paranoid. They were closing ranks, looking for ways to gain back lost power and influence after such a major blow had been struck to them. They had marched against the most obvious, bald-faced heretical tyranny Corvo could even imagine, and they had been utterly impotent against it.

They had the public’s sympathy, to a degree. But they had certainly lost their respect.

When evening came he was in his chambers, a glass of whiskey in his hand, doors locked, fire burning low in his fireplace. And without warning or preamble, the Outsider was sitting on his desk.

“Corvo.”

He didn’t look like he belonged there. Like a cut-out picture from a newspaper pasted onto the room, the firelight didn’t touch him. Black sparks splintered from the edges of him, swirled around him, twinkled out into nothing. This was new. He had never done this before.

“More bad news?” The words just rolled off Corvo’s tongue without a thought. He’d had enough drink to get to his head. He felt flushed with it, loose and languid.

“Straight to business?” The Outsider sounded more irritated than arch.

That, Corvo noted, was also new.

“You expect me to believe you just stopped by to say hello?”

“I know you better than that,” the Outsider was definitely arch, then. “Yet the truth remains what it is.”

Corvo let out a long, grumbling sigh. He turned an upholstered chair to face the desk, and sat down in it slowly. “You helped my daughter when I couldn’t. I guess I owe you some patience.”

“I don’t keep a ledger, Corvo.”

“That so.”

The Outsider laughed. Just a single brief, bitter chuckle. It sounded strange. “Tell me, dear Corvo, what would you pay me with? What do you think you, or anyone, has that would mean a fig to me? People have been looking for ways to bribe me for centuries. Do you think the Mark is something a person can buy?”

Corvo glowered. “All I know about you, Outsider, is how much I don’t know.”

The Outsider opened the bottle of Old Dunwall Special Reserve on Corvo’s desk. He poured a generous measure of it into a faceted glass. 

“If I knew what I could do or say that would win your trust, I would. But trust has to be given, sometimes.”

“You can hardly--”

“I trust you.” The Outsider lifted the glass to his lips, and he drank.

Corvo was speechless.

“I don’t play favorites. I don’t punish or reward. I only present choices and opportunities. The Marked do as they will with these gifts. But your choices, Corvo -- they fascinate me. And that fascination has made me fond of you.” The Outsider took another drink, his black gaze turning away to some middle-distance point of no importance. “Ask me anything, tonight, and I’ll answer. What you believe is your choice.”

“Why now? Why tonight, all of a sudden, do you decide to finally cut the shit?”

The Outsider’s gaze shifted back to Corvo and settled on his face. “I’m out of time,” he said.

That raised more questions than it answered. Void, he was frustrating. Corvo shook his head, shoved the hair out of his eyes. “Alright, then, why me?”

The Outsider paused to consider his words, long enough that Corvo wondered if he intended to answer at all. “Every coin in the Empire is stamped with your daughter’s face. Every man and woman knows Empress Emily Kaldwin by name, and every door, lofty or humble, is open to her. The woman who owns the world. But all her life, dear Emily has known that these people are her subjects, often her supplicants, but rarely her friends.”

The bastard was being as cryptic as ever, but Corvo thought he followed, after a few minutes of thought. “You come to me because I don’t want anything from you,” Corvo said. Maybe the Outsider not simply vanishing after he said his piece was helping. Or maybe the whiskey was.

A tiny twitch of a smile on the Outsider’s lips. “Nothing I’m not willing to share with you, dear Corvo,” he corrected.

There was the usual flicker of irritation in Corvo’s eyes at being called ‘dear’, but also as usual, he let it pass. He’d realized early on that the god seemed to enjoy annoying him.

“One last question, since you’re feeling generous. What do you _want_ , Outsider?”

“From you?”

“From me, or more generally. I’m in the dark either way.” Corvo leaned forward in his chair, elbows braced against his knees. His eyes were on the Outsider’s face, trying to prise some understanding from the subtle creases of it, the set of his jaw, the angles of his brow. An intense stare that others had withered beneath, Corvo realized, but the Outsider simply looked back into his sharp eyes with muted fascination.

“Impossible things,” the Outsider answered.

“Don’t be obtuse.”

“There’s only futility in being particular.” The Outsider frowned faintly, but his eyes seemed to be looking for something in Corvo’s expression. Sympathy, perhaps.

“Tell me what you want from me, at least. What impossible thing can I offer you?”

The Outsider stared at him for a long moment before he put aside his glass. He vanished in a swirl of black shards, and Corvo could feel the cold of the Void beside him even before he saw that small whirlwind of black reappear beside him. The Outsider coalesced, leaning over Corvo’s chair, hands braced on the arms of it. Corvo sat back, startled, but the Outsider only leaned closer.

The Outsider leaned closer until their lips touched.

The first thought through Corvo’s mind was that, Void, it had been a long time. There was as much surprise at being kissed, as at being kissed by the god of the Void. While the Outsider drew back again, Corvo regarded him with utter perplexity on his face.

The Outsider had a little quirk at the corner of his mouth. Another not-quite-smile with a twist of wryness. Self-deprecation, Corvo realized. That even as the god had leaned into him he’d been bracing for rejection.

Something about that made Corvo angry. Not at the Outsider, but at some other force, some other thing he couldn’t put a name to. 

When Corvo was angry, he was stubborn. Stubborn and defiant.

“That’s less impossible than you think,” he growled.

That surprised him, Corvo could tell. From anyone else the look on his face might come across as ‘nonplussed, but in a good way.’ His black eyes widened just a touch, the self-deprecating quirk to his mouth gone and instead, his lips parted ever so slightly.

Corvo started to rise from his chair and the Outsider flitted back from him, another sudden dispersal and re-apparition, back to Corvo’s desk. Corvo advanced on him slowly, hands at his sides. Almost chest to chest with the Outsider, he stood and looked down into his face, down into the black eyes that gazed back up at him. From this close he could see the barely-paler hint of irises in those black pools.

Corvo’s heart was pounding. This was madness. This was insane. This was…

“May I touch you?”

A nod, just a small dip of the Outsider’s chin. Corvo’s hands closed carefully around the god’s upper arms. He was solid enough. The only strangeness to the way he felt was that he was colder than the room. There was no warmth to his body.

“May I kiss you?”

This time, the Outsider’s brows drew downward and together. Perplexity. But he nodded again. He didn’t close his eyes, but he lowered them, black gaze focused on Corvo’s shoulder as he leaned close.

This was just right, somehow.

Corvo’s lips touched the Outsider’s, closed against them. His whiskers scratched against the other’s smoother face, and the warm breath from Corvo’s nose brushed over cool, pale skin. The god kissed back. His mouth tasted like the Void, but there was a warmth in there as Corvo’s tongue slipped past his teeth. As if the heat of the Outsider’s body was locked away deep down.

He felt the Outsider’s arms around his back, a cool weight and pressure. His own arms slipped around the god’s narrow waist, and their bodies pressed close. Corvo’s thigh pressed between the Outsider’s slender legs, his sex stirring against the other’s hip.

Everything blurred around them then. The room was just a suggestion of itself, out of focus, unimportant. Clothes dissolved away like vapor. They were in bed, hands roaming over naked skin. When Corvo woke with the morning sun, he remembered that they peaked in tandem, holding onto each-other with grips strong enough to bruise. He remembered the taste of the Void in every kiss, and the the sound of the Outsider’s quiet moans in his ear while they made love.


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billie Lurk and her roommate go shopping and chat over coffee in the Palace district.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to the present. Billie and the former Outsider make some plans and unpack some emotional baggage. Also, if you haven't had an affogato you should try one. Not the Starbucks one. It's fine and all but you should get a for-real one. Sit down and really enjoy it. If you're in Seattle there's this place in Pioneer Square that does them perfect. I am no longer in Seattle. I think of this affogato with tears standing in my eyes.

“So. What comes next?”

Billie sat with legs folded on the floor, facing the man who had once been the Outsider. They each had a mug of fresh, hot coffee in their hands, though the man seemed ambivalent about his, taking testing sips and finding it either too hot or too bitter, from the look on his face.

“I need to go to Dunwall,” he said.

“It’s going to take some time to get you fare for a voyage, but we can do it. I can call in some favors if that’s what it takes.” There were other captains, other smugglers, who owed Billie on a few counts.

“There are other concerns,” the man said. Then he seemed to realize something and his gaze flickered downward, contrite. “Forgive me. I’m grateful for your offer -- for any help you give. I’ll repay you as I’m able.”

Billie shook her head. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “But what’s this ‘other concern’?”

“When the world is wounded, the void wells up in its torn flesh like fresh blood. But the Void isn’t _of_ the world, and while the Void floods through these rents in time and reality, it drowns any chance of healing.”

Billie looked at the man over the rim of her coffee cup. “It is too early in the morning for this cryptic bullshit.”

The man pursed his lips, returning Billie’s flat look. He leaned the back of his head against the wall behind him and tried to find other words. “You’ve seen the hollows that others can’t. Places where the Void sits and pools like condensation on a cold glass. But they indicate a larger problem. Things fall apart, Billie. Like a garment, once torn, that tear will only grow with wear. Unless…”

“...Unless we mend it.”

The man smiled at that, in his tight, subdued way.

“So... how.”

“Your eye, your hand… even your knife. I’ve given you all the tools. You even know where to start.”

Her eye. Her arm. “Aramis Stilton’s estate.”

“Only weeks ago, dear Emily slipped back and forth through the tear in that place, weaving her way through the warp and weft of time itself. She witnessed two fates for your friend Aramis, and she chose a kinder one. But even though his mind is intact, the gash in reality that freed Delilah remains, growing wider by the day.”

“Is Stilton alright? Is he in danger?”

“Not immediate danger, but like you, he’s had dreams. Even a few waking ones.”

Billie took a moment to think while she finished her coffee. At length she rose to go set another pot brewing. “Guess we need to make a social call. And me with nothing to wear.” Her voice dripped sarcasm.

 

The man posted letters when they stepped out later that morning. One of them particularly large and thick, another far slimmer, and Billie was annoyed that she hadn’t even seen the addresses before he’d slipped them them into the postbox. He’d seen her quizzical look, and he’d smugly ignored it. Billie resolved to start snooping in that journal he’d been writing in the moment they got back to the apartment.

Billie could take semblances, but if they were going to visit Aramis Stilton together, her companion could stand to look the part of a member of high society. His clothing wasn’t too far off the mark, but it was also the only suit of clothes he owned, dusty and scuffed in places from the scavenging he’d been doing.

That, and for all her tendency to tie her purse-strings tight, Billie Lurk had recently robbed the biggest bank in Serkonos. Sometimes, you had to live a little.

The best haberdashery in town was in the Palace district, a ferry-trip from their erstwhile home in Battista. It was noon by the time they reached the terminal halfway across the bay. Billie kept her head down and her companion managed to do the same, flipping through a fresh copy of the day’s Karnaca Gazette.

It took some time to find her mark. An older woman, close in height to Billie herself, wearing a powder blue suit and a hat elaborately adorned with silk hydrangeas. She laid the woman down in the atrium of a quiet building, then laid a book, open, across her lap. It looked as if she’d simply fallen asleep.

Her companion looked at her with fascinated scrutiny. Those eyes of his weren’t used to being fooled, Billie thought. “Remember to act like an aristocrat,” she said.

His nostrils flared in distaste.

“Fine. Just keep quiet and I’ll do the talking.”

Inside the shop, a young dandy immediately swept past racks of clothing to greet them. He had curly red hair, cheeks covered in freckles, and an infectious smile. “Welcome to Beybury’s,” he said, arms and palms open. “How might I serve you today?”

Billie, in her disguise, brushed past him with her nose in the air. “Finally someone in this sweltering dungheap who knows their place. No sooner does my nephew step off the boat from Caulkenny than some worthless porter stumbles and sends his luggage to the bottom of Karnaca bay! My boy cuffed him across the face quite soundly -- only what the lout deserved! -- and what does the Grand Guard do? They warn him off as if he was one of the rabble! The indignity!”

The shop clerk was utterly attentive, taking Billie’s elbow and escorting her to a well-upholstered chair. He took a beautiful mother-of-pearl fan from a countertop display and fanned her with it as she unpinned her vastly-brimmed hat. “Oh dear, that is simply an ordeal! Such foul treatment for such fine folk! I must -- I simply _must_ try to make it right.”

While the clerk simpered and fawned, her ‘nephew’ couldn’t even look her in the eye. His mouth was pressed in a tight line, an expression Billie hadn’t seen on him before. As she discussed the necessity of how they had to replace simply _everything_ as the poor boy’s entire wardrobe was a loss, she realized what it was. He was trying not to laugh.

Once he deemed her adequately settled, the clerk, who introduced himself as Wendel, turned his attention on her companion, moving past solicitous apologies to helping him find staple articles of clothing. He commented briefly, and approvingly, of the short peacoat he was wearing, speculating that it was “Draper’s Ward work” and quite tasteful, to gushing over his “so unique! Yet so understated!” cufflinks. 

The man who had once been the Outsider had exacting standards, Billie observed. He wasn’t quite fussy, but everything he picked out for himself had a sort of simplicity to it that came across as sleek and contemporary, rather than austere. He favored black, which wasn’t a surprise, but as the clerk worked with him he ventured towards some lighter greys. Eventually he added a gorgeous silk waistcoat to his purchases, dyed a deep blue-violet and subtly embroidered with thread of the same hue, a pattern of scrolling leaves and, on his left breast, a raven, all described as a difference in texture rather than color. 

Even before being tailored it fit him immaculately. Billie realized the salesclerk was starting to look at her companion like he was planning to devour him whole. The clerk was leaning in close with some excuse of adjusting the other’s shirt collar, when he whispered something in his ear that made her ‘nephew’ blink.

There was some incredulity on the former god’s face as he took the clerk’s hands in his, squoze them gently, and guided them away. Billie thought she heard him murmur something to the effect of “You flatter me,” as he let go. The clerk grinned, happy enough with that, and her companion looked… bemused, maybe. It was hard to say. But at least he wasn’t offended.

Once they had settled on a goodly selection of clothes, Wendel took detailed measurements, asked a few questions, and filled out some notes for their tailors. When Billie provided an address in the Battista district, that got a raised eyebrow, but then Wendel mentioned that the Cyria district had been ‘going to pot’ and there had been numerous robberies, so having an apartment in Battista might work out in their favor.

“But if you need anything -- anything at all! Please call on me, won’t you?” Wendel wrote his own address on a card, sliding it across the counter not to Billie, but her ‘nephew.’

Wendel winked, and Billie’s companion had that bewildered look on his face again, as if he was partly intrigued but mostly confused.

Outside the haberdashery, they ducked into an alley together and Billie dropped her Visage. She rubbed her temples and leaned back against a wall of dingy bricks, letting the haze of exhaustion clear away. Holding the illusion for so long was difficult, like clenching a dozen muscles all in tandem and for too long. The man stood close by, even clasping her shoulder for a moment.

“Are you sure all this is necessary?” He asked.

Billie nodded. “The Abbey is watching Stilton’s estate. I found letters about it in the Conservatory.”

“We can’t pose as servants?”

“If I were them, I’d know every servant who travels in and out of that gatehouse on a regular basis. That, and servants talk to each other.”

“So we pay a social call, as socialites.”

Billie nodded, and it felt like her brain sloshed against the inside of her skull with that slight motion. She groaned, her eye wincing shut for a moment. “Yeah. But first, I need some coffee blacker than your eyes used to be.”

The man considered for a moment, then he offered his arm like a playhouse usher, his head tilted in invitation. “I know a place you might like. The coffee is strong, the lights are dim, and the view is fantastic.”

Billie gave him a slanted smile. “Is this a date?” She stood on her own, patting his shoulder as she declined the offered arm.

“Given that it’s on your coin, I’m reluctant to call it that.” He turned to lead the way back out of the alley and up the street. Billie followed, their pace a casual stroll. The afternoon sun poured down on them, warm and golden, and the man opened his coat.

“You’re not really my type,” Billie said.

“You favor women. You feel a greater attraction and a greater rapport. But none of the lovers you’ve taken have ever been to you what Deirdre was.”

Billie frowned. The man walked the barest step ahead of her, his hands clasped behind his back and his head down. “ _Don’t_ … Can we not talk about her. Please.”

He paused, looked at her, clear contrition on his face. “I’m sorry, Billie.”

“Don’t bring out the heavy stuff without, I don’t know, a warning?” She sighed and shook her head, unable to look away from a pair of hazel eyes that had seen too much. “But the heavy stuff is all you’ve got, isn’t it.”

The corners of his mouth drew back slightly, tightened. Guilty as charged. He pushed open a door that led to a dimly-lit stairwell and they climbed the stairs together. 

The cafe on the upper floor was called Blackfish, according to a sign on the door rendered in black paint and gilt. The lights were dim, just as promised, yet the entire front of the room opened onto a good-sized balcony and it gave the place an airy, calm feeling. The smell of coffee filled Billie’s nostrils, fresh and rich and endlessly alluring. The counter at the front housed a gorgeous espresso machine, all tooled brass and polished copper. 

The barista was a wiry man with a gorgeous mustache and white shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows. There was an odd exchange of looks between them as Billie approached the counter. The barista clearly noticed Billie’s eye -- it was impossible not to, of that she was aware. He scanned her face for a moment and sized her up, then came to the conclusion that most shopkeepers did; that he wasn’t the Grand Guard and it was none of his business if this face was on wanted posters all over town. He was just going to do his job, and his job was to serve coffee. 

Billie’s companion narrowed his eyes at the man across the counter for a far briefer moment, then looked away to stare with intense concentration at the slate above the bar.

Billie ordered a doppio con panna.

“I…” He frowned, scratched the short hair at the back of his head. “I don’t know what any of these are.”

Billie stared. Incredulity was her first reaction. The former god of the void, who carried all the secrets of the world, stymied by a menu. But then, really, why would he know about coffee? 

On the other hand, the barista’s face lit up, and he quickly tamped some fresh espresso into the portafilter. “You are welcome to sample anything you like,” he said, his voice a deep, smooth baritone that Billie hadn’t expected from his small frame. “I’m starting you a shot of our house blend. If you have a sweet tooth, you should _absolutely_ try the affogato. We're the only coffee house in town with an ice cream maker.” He tamped a second portafilter, a double-spouted one, for Billie’s doppio.

Billie’s companion watched with fascination as much as bewilderment. She saw confusion flicker across his face and thought, he doesn’t know, does he? He doesn’t know whether he has a ‘sweet tooth’ or not.

“We’ll try it. One affogato.”

The barista looked up with a grin. His teeth were as perfect as his mustache. “You know what? This one’s on the house. It’s not every day I get a first-timer. You just promise to come back if you like it, alright?”

When they took a seat on the balcony, Billie gave her companion a slanted smile. “What is it about you that makes people give you free food?”

“It’s not deliberate,” he said, picking up the small silver teaspoon on his saucer. He took a careful spoonful of ice cream streaked with rich espresso, and when his lips closed around it, his eyes rolled shut with pleasure so intense that he moaned.

He let it linger on his tongue, and swallowed it almost reluctantly. When his eyes opened again they were half-lidded, pupils blown wide and his focus hazy. 

“I feel like I shouldn’t be seeing this,” Billie said.

His restrained smile was easier than usual. “Nothing like this existed when I was young,” he said, just a hint of a languid drawl in the way he spoke. 

“No iced cream four thousand years ago?”

He shook his head. Then he took another bite and seemed to slip into a reverie.

Billie drank her own espresso and found herself feeling more or less the same. She enjoyed coffee, and this was as perfect as it got, with fresh clotted cream making it rich and velvety in her mouth. Her knees felt weak.

“Fuck. This is _good._ ”

“So it isn’t just the novelty,” the man commented.

“We are _so_ coming back here. I don’t care if it’s an hour on the ferry both ways.”

“Agreed.”

For a while they were silent as they drank together. The balcony faced the bay, and they could see the ships upon it, large and small. Some pleasure-craft with white triangular sails, some small trawlers, and one large whaling ship, its rigging empty as it set out to the open ocean. It made Billie think of the Dreadful Wale. Maybe Daud's passing had masked what a hard farewell that, too, had been. She was Billie Lurk again and likely always, with this eye upon her face, this sliver of the void strapped to her arm. But Meagan Foster had had a good run.

Billie’s thoughts returned to the letters the man had posted that morning. “Who were you writing to?”

“One was a personal letter to a friend. The other was information, addressed to someone who could use it.”

Billie gave him a pointed look. “What kind of information?”

“I’m not blackmailing anyone,” he said, hearing the ‘what are you playing at’ that Billie’s tone implied. He paused in thought, sipping up some espresso and melted cream. “I provided Lucia Pastor of the Shindaerey Miners Family Committee information on how to collect the accounts held by a certain defunct group of cultists -- at least those not directly managed by Dolores Michaels herself.”

Billie looked impressed. “You could’ve had that fortune for yourself.”

“I don’t want anything they’ve touched.” He said it with venom on his tongue, nostrils flaring in disgust. “I know how much blood is on that money. Now, it can be used for something worthwhile.”

“I’ve got letters and ledger books I carried out of that place. Evidence of fraud. I was hanging onto it all, thinking of finding a buyer.” She pursed her lips for a moment. “I’m going to follow your example. All this shit is going straight to Cristofer Jeorge.” Maybe she wouldn’t get any coin out of it, but seeing the Michaels Bank crumble would be worth it. It sent a frisson down her back, goosebumps rising on her skin, and what had been just a thought before solidified into something more real. She had done something good. Like a stone thrown into a still pond, that good deed was sending ripples outward. It could change things in Karnaca. And maybe it was changing things in her as well.

The man across from her had a look of pensive satisfaction, hearing that. “Good,” he said. “It will shore up the evidence Lucia’s already brought him. More than enough to get Emily’s attention.”

Billie squinted. “You can’t keep calling the Empress of the Isles ‘Emily’ like you’re on a first name basis.”

“But we are. I’m a friend of her father’s from the bad old days.”

Billie, in the middle of sipping her coffee, almost spat it across the table as a few things clicked together in her mind. Her voice dropped to a sort of whispered shout. “Were you writing to Corvo *fucking* Attano?!”

The man sipped the last trickle of his affogato, his stare as earnest and open as always, looking for all the world as if he’d done nothing wrong. “Yes.”

Billie sat back hard in her chair, wheels turning in her mind. “ _And_ the Empress?”

“What he shares with her is up to him, but they have very few secrets from one another since the coup.”

“Since the… fuck. She’s Marked, isn’t she? She was using _magic_ all that time in Karnaca.”

“Does she remind you even more of your younger self now that you know that?”

That set off a pang of regret that put a sour look on Billie’s face. Then a sad one. She rose from her chair and walked over to the balustrade, stared off across the bay. “I remember when she came aboard the Dreadful Wale. I remember the whole trip to Karnaca, this girl hurting so much for her father, but she wasn’t lost and afraid. She was going to do whatever it took to stop Delilah. I saw her shoot, saw her practice with her father’s sword, and I thought to myself, we should’ve been friends. She thought I _was_ her friend.”

“But I held her father back while Daud ran his knife through her mother. She was standing right there, a little girl. She saw it all.” Billie still felt the same sick feeling when she thought of it. A cold that grew in the pit of her stomach and reached up to wrap a snaking tendril around her heart. Emily’s father. Emily’s mother. And Emily herself, looking on. Screaming.

“You told Emily the truth, in the end. A woman who could have been your friend, lost to you before that bond could ever take hold.” The man joined her, leaning against the balustrade to her left.

“You were watching?”

“Yes. I saw the hurt inside you both. The way each of you wrapped it up like a delicate treasure and buried it close to your hearts. Emily because she has a whole trove of things just like it, a shrine in her heart to the mother she lost. And you, because you believe you deserve the pain.”

Billie swallowed hard. “What is the point in talking about it now?”

“Because you still believe that,” he said.

“Because it’s fucking true!”

“Billie.”

Her face was drawn with anger, her lip trembling with hurt. He didn’t need the Void, after all this time, to see right through a person. To see right through her.

“The real truth is that ‘deserving’ anything is as much a made-up story as anything the Abbey likes to tell. We want things to be fair. We want the world to make sense. Good things should come to good people, and wicked people should be punished. But we know the world doesn’t work like that.”

Billie didn’t want to lock gazes with him. She turned her face away, and he heard her quietly scoff her agreement at the very idea that the world was ever fair.

“Whichever you believe you are, good or bad, to _me_ you are a hero. I’m still trying to decide what I will do with the freedom, the life, that you’ve given me. I only hope that my choices honor the one you made in giving me all of this.”

Billie placed her flesh and blood hand on his shoulder, gripped it hard until she saw him wince. But there was a smile on his face, and for once it didn’t look like it was a fleeting, dying thing. He looked at her sidelong and there was warmth in his eyes.


	5. Interlude 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Outsider returns to Corvo Attano's dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Further corvosider, still not particularly explicit. Dream sex is very soft-focus, donchaknow. Enjoy; shit's about to get real.

The Lord Protector found plenty of time for second thoughts.

While he bathed that morning his mind churned over all of it. The dream. The coup, and the fifteen years between it and the day he lost Jessamine.

Sometimes it felt longer. Or at least he felt like he must be much, much older. Other times the pain felt fresh and new. Like the long conversation he’d had with Emily about things only the other could ever understand, when she’d told him the Heart was gone.

He’d known. He’d woken from the stone with the fading echo of Jessamine’s voice in his ears, the last wisps of a dream. “Oh, Corvo, your eyes! Your hands! Your heart…”

He hadn’t wept. He’d turned away so his daughter wouldn’t see the tears standing in his eyes. She had seen them anyway.

He dried himself roughly and he dressed, and there was still more left to try and pick apart.

Void, it had been so long since he’d been with anyone. When he looked back on it the reasons why were vague and slippery. He was busy. He’d had duties as Royal Spymaster to add to his duties as Royal Protector. Then on top of that, he was a father and Emily had no one else. And he was her trainer as well. 

But all of that smacked of simple excuses.

Romance would have just complicated things. How could he let someone into his life when they might find out about the Mark? It had been hard enough keeping it from Emily.

No. That was closer, but still not it.

He was the most powerful man in the Empire. Who could he trust? There had been advances, but how to know whose interest was genuine, or who was coming to him as someone they could use? Someone to bring them several steps closer to the Empress, to the throne.

That, he thought bitterly, was much closer to the truth.

Even if there had been someone, even if he found someone he could trust with his life and with Emily’s and with every secret that he had…

Someday he would lose them. Maybe not the same way he had lost Jessamine. Maybe it would be illness. Maybe an accident. All he knew was that few people close to the crown ever lived to grow old.

Losing Jessamine had nearly killed him. If not for Emily, he would have wished that it had.

Could one ‘lose’ a god, though? Could Corvo claim he truly even ‘had’ him?

He ran a comb through his wet hair, and then swept through it with his fingers. No, it would be hubris to try and claim the god was or ever could be ‘his’. Yet another reason this was idiocy, on his part. He should have thought this through.

He could see that sardonic quirk of the Outsider’s mouth again in his mind’s eye. A god, bracing for rejection. Even _he_ knew it was stupid. He had even called it “impossible.” 

But they’d done it anyway.

“Why?” Corvo shaped the word, scowling at himself in the mirror. Why had he done this idiot thing, and what was going to happen next because of it?

Maybe nothing. Maybe the Outsider was having as many second thoughts as he was himself. Maybe even more. What did the god have to do but watch the world and brood over it?

He was, what had Emily said? Over four thousand years old. He *knew* things, possibly everything, and even when his observations were unwelcome Corvo had always considered them astute. And yet the god had kissed him. The Outsider had come to him and kissed him, and made love with him.

But why?

Breakfast was simple. Toast, pickled fish eyes, and as much hot coffee as he could drink. He took the meal alone, wanting to keep it brief and get a couple solid hours in at the practice yard. While he ate, the question he posed himself gradually changed. What did he want? What had he been looking for that he craved enough to ignore his own better judgment, to go crashing through barricades that had fenced him in for over a decade?

What did the Outsider want? That was at least as important.

Those, Corvo concluded, were the right questions. And that was enough to settle him, as the day wore on. Practice, training, were a comfort to him, letting his mind grow meditative as he slipped into the routines of the day. His restless energy found its channel in the familiar motions of his body. Sparring anchored him in the present, helped him find his center.

By the time evening came he was having entirely different thoughts about that dream and its consequences, and a growing realization that the answer to his question might not be as complicated as he’d thought.

He wanted to see the Outsider again. That much he was certain of, as days stretched on into a week and a bit more. He still wasn’t sure what he’d ask the god, but he wanted another night.

Corvo was nodding off at a desk piled with paperwork when a whisper brushed across his ear. 

“You’ve been thinking of me a great deal, dear Corvo.”

Corvo jerked upright. 

The god wore a hint of a smirk on his face as he materialized on the other side of his desk, hands clasped behind his back. “The Isles are riddled with shrines raised in my name, but ‘Outsider’ is only a word. It feels different, these whispers of attention from someone who knows me. Pebbles tossed at the windowpane of some teenager’s first love. I might be embarrassed, if I were you.”

Corvo was. His cheeks flushed, and he glared. “I’ll make a point of forgetting you exist,” he growled.

The Outsider blinked. “The choice is yours,” he said. “But I wasn’t complaining.” He stepped back, leaned against the back of one of the upholstered chairs by the fireplace.

“Haven’t you been courted before? I remember an old witch who called you her lover.”

“Those who have courted me have been like the most crass and brazen of your daughter’s suitors. I turn them away at the gates and burn their letters unread. Until you… if courting me is your intention.” There was something shy in the way he said that. His smugness retreating behind a more familiar reserve, and then the most tentative touch of hopeful curiosity.

It was unexpected. Every time these small tells appeared, the fleeting image Corvo formed was so far different from what he thought he knew that he craved another glimpse. “I’m still making up my mind,” Corvo said. He rose from his desk, eyes on the Outsider. “If I did decide to court you,” he murmured, “how would you want to be courted?”

A twitch at the corners of the Outsider’s lush mouth. Amusement, Corvo thought. 

“Be the man you’ve always been -- the one who fascinates me. Fall asleep early with a half-full glass of wine beside you so your dreams are warm the way the Void isn’t. Think of me the way you have today... more pebbles at my windowpane.”

By the time he was done speaking, Corvo was standing close, leaning in. They kissed, the Outsider cupping the corner of Corvo’s jaw with one graceful hand. Corvo’s arms wrapped around him and pulled him close.

They made love again. It was slower; the Outsider let Corvo undress him rather than simply dreaming their clothing away. Corvo’s calloused hands perused him. He kissed every dip and swell of the Outsider’s body and lingered as he wished. And then the Outsider did the same, tracing the furrows of Corvo’s many scars. His arms wrapped strong around Corvo’s back when Corvo laid him down, and the Outsider felt every surge of the body upon him while Corvo took him.


	6. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billie Lurk and her companion wake in the night. The Battista District is burning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my hand slipped and suddenly plot.
> 
> I'm sorry. I promise to water your crops once I'm done burning them down.
> 
> ps.: I hope you like Reese (Kavanaugh). She's the shopkeeper who warns you to stay hidden when Paolo comes by in DH2.

It would take two weeks, maybe more, for the tailoring to be finished. Two weeks to while away in Battista, in the small, mostly-empty apartment they shared. When they returned to it after a day spent almost next door to the Grand Palace, it was hard not to be starkly aware of how much they didn’t have. Both of them, at least, were very used to making do. Still, it wasn’t so easy to sleep on the floor. The pair of them talked late into the night, seated beside guttering candles, drinking weak tea until even discomfort couldn’t keep sleep at bay.

When Billie’s companion woke her with a hard shake, she knew she hadn’t slept long.

It was still dark outside. Adrenaline had Billie’s mind as clear and sharp as broken glass. The man whispered “Listen!” 

She heard it then, over the pounding of her own pulse. Sobbing, wailing. Pleading too muted by distance for her to make out the words. All of it cut short by a gunshot.

Billie realized she could smell smoke through the open window.

She tore herself out of her body then and lunged for that aperture, her spirit gliding almost weightless through the window, down to the street. It was like being underwater. Colors muted, sounds present but distorted and strange. She raced through the empty streets like the wind driving a storm, until she found them not so empty.

People were running. She saw a girl, dragging her smaller brother behind her by the wrist. An old vagrant then, stumbling out of an alley, still flushed with drink yet sobered by fear. Then a man clutching an overstuffed carpetbag to his chest, with a snarling hound close at his heels. 

She rounded a bend and she could see the fires.

She could see the men in bronze masks beating down doors, dragging people into the streets. Piling up furniture, clothing, books, paintings, and setting them ablaze.

She saw people lined up, kneeling down, facing the walls of the homes the Overseers had raided. A masked overseer had his pistol cocked, muzzle to the back of one of their heads while a disaffected officer checked off names on his ledger.

When Billie’s soul snapped back to her body there was bile in her throat.

“It’s the Abbey. They’re raiding the district.”

The man beside her had an indecipherable look on his face. Then he was on his feet, snatching up the journal he’d been writing in, shoving it into Billie’s hands. “Hide this. Run.”

“You can’t expect me to j--”

“Billie. Stay with me and we’re both finished. You have your powers and I have my wits. Trust me and run.”

He was right. She couldn’t carry him off into the night and expect to be fast enough to go unnoticed. 

“Stay safe, you little shit.”

Billie tucked the journal under her arm and swung open the door to the fire escape. She vaulted the rail and flickered away to the roof of the building across the alley. She’d been caching things since the early days, but tonight she would need to find someplace both hidden and remote enough that it wouldn’t end up being burned down by the Abbey.

The wind corridor would be perfect. The struts, chutes, and windmills were all high enough that no one but her could access them easily, not without a small work crew at least. And if the fires in the streets got out of control, the wind coming down the chutes was strong enough to keep it moving downhill. Billie left the journal on the small maintenance platform at the top of the nearest windmill, then paused to look down at the streets.

Lights were coming on in windows all over the Battista district. Billie could see clusters of people, families in their nightclothes running hunched and furtive away from the fires and the screams.

They were gathering at the Family Committee building. Every window in the building was lit. Someone had even gotten the streetlights lit again, and many of the people gathered had lanterns of their own. They were pulling things into the street while the children and the elderly were hustled into the building. They were piling up barricades.

She saw a few uniformed guards among them. Not enough, though. She wondered if some of them were lying dead at the entrance to the district; at least they weren’t helping the Overseers. She turned to the east and she saw lights at Stilton’s gatehouse, and the red coats of Grand Guard officers. The were motioning people through the gates, to the manor grounds, while more of the guards throughout the district came running.

For once they were doing their job. They escorted any evacuees they saw, instead of barking about curfew and brandishing pistols. She was sure they could smell the fires, but she wondered if they all knew the cause yet. Clearly the guards helping barricade the Family Committee building had decided what side they were on; probably people with families here, people who’d grown up in Battista. But what about the guards gathering at Stilton’s doorstep? Did they know they’d be going up against the Abbey?

Billie heard something from the alley below. Somebody banging a pot with a spoon. She heard a shouted warning with it: “Go! Run!”

Billie knew that voice. She saw her anonymous friend standing in the alley, facing a pair of scrawny teens. Billie saw herself and Deirdre in those thin, hunched figures and imagined how scared they had to be. “Stay off Durante street, go east down Fabbri! You know the Family Committee’s soup kitchen? Go there, you’ll be safe!”

Part of Billie chuckled in spite of it all. What, no time for cryptic pronouncements and pithy, bitter insights? 

Billie dropped from her perch on the windmill. The Overseers were closing in, but her friend kept canvassing the alleyways. Now and then other vagrants would detach from the shadows and go scurrying away like the rats in the gutters, while Billie watched from the rooftops. Then it happened. A pair of Overseers spotted her unnamed friend from the end of an alley while he was helping a shaking old man to his feet.

The Overseers shouted at them and started down the alley at a jog.

“HEY!” Billie shouted to her friend below. “Get to Abrantes Street, GO!”

Her friend ducked down, looped the old vagrant’s arm around his shoulders and helped him along, turning left out of the alley. There was a loaded lumber cart there on the street rails, and Billie hoped that he saw it, hoped he could guess the plan. But the old man was slow and weak and palsied. He reminded her of Anton, struggling to recover after Emily had carried him out of Jindosh’s mansion.

He didn’t stand a chance without their help.

Billie aimed her voltaic gun at the lumber cart’s hitches while she held her breath for them. _Please let them make it, please--_

They were steps away from the cart when the Overseers came around the corner. A shot rang out. Billie felt her heart in her throat for an instant, but the bullet skipped off the cobblestones a ways beyond the two.

“You can’t save everyone.” Billie hissed through clenched teeth, wishing he could hear her. She kept her aim. “Leave the old man, save yourself,” she wished she could tell him. “I didn’t haul your sorry ass from the Void for you to die in less than a week!”

He whispered something to the old man and let him go. But Billie’s friend didn’t run. Instead he lunged for the gutters, started throwing everything he could find at the Overseers. Loose bricks, old bottles, even the bloated carcass of a dead rat. The old vagrant staggered and hobbled past the lumber cart while the Overseers shouted and cursed. Billie clenched her jaw, curled her fingers and fired, and the whole stack of timber rolled into the street while the old man slipped away into another alley.

One of the Overseers grabbed Billie’s friend by the arm while the other struck him across the face with the butt of his pistol. He couldn’t take a swing at them, but he didn’t go down either. Damn, Billie thought, he could take a hit. She could hear him speaking but she couldn’t make out anything but the utter contempt in his tone.

“Don’t tempt them, you little shit!”

The Overseer holding him got his other arm, pulled them both behind his back. The other planted a fist in his gut. It was all that second Overseer had a chance to do before Billie put a bolt through his neck.

The remaining Overseer shouted a curse as his fellow fell. He looked to the rooftops and saw Billie’s silhouette, then pulled an arm around his captive’s neck and held him up to shield himself with his hostage. “Up there!” the Overseer shouted. “There’s a shooter on the rooftops!”

There was no way to get a clear shot. The Overseer knew it as he dragged his captive back the way they’d came. Back to the rest of the raid, to be shackled and likely executed with the others.

One bullet, then another struck against the iron chimney to Billie’s side. She swore under her breath and ducked behind it. Now spotted, it was too dangerous to stay put. A moment of thought and she displaced herself to another rooftop, then another. She had to find a way back to him, back to where they were gathering up their prisoners.

“--the whole place to the ground, and her in it!” 

Billie caught a snippet of conversation from the street below. She looked down and realized she was perched on a balcony above the basement “pawn shop” where the black market was housed.

“Nothing else for it. We’ll never get past those damned shutters, but neither will she. Let her cook in there.”

They were stacking refuse around the doors to the shop, pouring out whale oil while one of them pulled a burning stave of splintered wood out of one of the bonfires the raiders had made. They were going to torch the place.

That woman, Billie thought. The halfway decent one, the one with the face she liked. Reese. Reese was in there.

Need to clear them out, Billie thought. And they’d provided the means themselves. Billie took aim, and sent an incendiary bolt straight into the stack of whale oil canisters they’d been pouring out. A streak of blue and orange, and then a thunderous explosion, a fireball so large she could feel the heat from her perch across the street.

Three Overseers went down. When one of the ones left standing spotted her and raised his arm to point, she followed her bolt with a grenade.

The street was hers, after that.

She displaced herself down to street level, through the pawn shop’s open door. The whole place was wreathed in flame. She pulled her scarf over her mouth to keep the smoke from her lungs, and she pounded on the steel shutters over the till.

She called for the shopkeeper by name, and hoped to the Void and back that she would answer.

The shutters opened just a quarter of the way. Billie saw a pair of familiar blue eyes peer at her from below the steel, wide with surprise and relief.

The armored door beside the till slammed open, Reese staggering through with her arm over her mouth, coughing so hard she was nearly doubled over. Billie ducked down, pulled the slim woman over her shoulder, and she displaced them both to the street beyond the flames. She could hear Reese’s startled exclamation from her back, cut short as she displaced them away again. A balcony, a fire escape, the top of a street lamp, criss-crossing the street until the Family Committee’s barricades were in sight.

Billy set Reese down in the awning-shadowed doorway of a small bodega. The woman had soot on her clothing and a look of complete astonishment on her face.

“Look, it’s better if you don’t as--”

Reese kissed her hard on the mouth.

Then it was Billie’s turn to be dumbstruck.

They stared at each-other without a word until Reese shook her head to clear it. “Shit! I’m sorry, I didn’t m--”

“Don’t you _dare_ apologize. Just get inside the Family Committee building and stay safe.”

Reese stared at her a moment longer, even as her weight shifted back, her body poised to turn and run. But then she grabbed the front of Billie’s coat and pulled. She kissed her again. “You come and find me when this shitstorm blows over, okay? You saved my life, Billie Lurk.”


	7. Interlude 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Outsider comes to Corvo's dreams for one last time, to say farewell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The age closes around us all like rows of black teeth. 
> 
> A lot of the dialogue here references the Hollows. I also bawled while writing this so hopefully it actually comes across as miserably sad as I felt while I was working on it. My fiance kept asking if I was alright, and pulling me into hugs.

His lover was a black ocean of secrets, of unknown and unknowable things, and so much of what came from his perfect lips was as bitter as the brine. But when they kissed, it tasted sweet.

He was the god of the endless void, as inscrutable and unfathomable as his domain. His power was so vast, Corvo was certain the Mark contained only the smallest, heady sip of it. But in Corvo’s arms, he was vulnerable. 

In the light of the morning, Corvo rubbed a calloused thumb across the back of his left hand, and realized he was in love.

It was too late to rethink it, and pointless to regret it. Instead, Corvo let himself indulge.

There were short letters written. Scraps of poetry, or attempts at it. Moments alone with a cigar and an audiograph spent gazing out of windows, off of balconies. Pebbles at the windowpane of the god who watched him.

His heart ached with it. Corvo wondered at times if it was stiff from disuse, or maybe just deeply scarred; loving Jessamine hadn’t hurt the way this did. But even the pain was sweet. Perhaps it was just the ache of sensation returning to a part of him that had gone numb.

He said nothing to Emily, though she had noticed his mind wandering. She’d probed at first, but then given him one of her assessing looks and let him be. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe she trusted him to come to her when he was ready. Or maybe she realized what he had; he was content.

It was only a handful of days later that the Outsider came to him again. This time there were no words. Only his lover leaning over him, kissing him desperately hard. Corvo wrapped his arms around him, pulled him down into his bed, loved him until the god could only shake and plead beneath him, took him until they both were sated and the sky outside was growing lighter.

The Outsider didn’t vanish, this time. The dream didn’t end when they were done. He let Corvo hold him, his head tucked under Corvo’s bearded chin until, at length, Corvo realized he was trembling.

“What is it?” His words were soft, barely above a whisper.

“This is the last time we will see one another.”

There was a long silence as Corvo felt those words sink into him. He could feel the Outsider’s fingers digging into his back, holding onto him like he feared being torn away. He didn’t want to go.

“Why?”

“I told you the night we began this. I am out of time.”

Corvo brushed his lips against his lover’s temple. “What does that mean for a god?”

There was a dry, bitter chuckle muffled against Corvo’s chest. “You say these things believing that a god is so much more than human. The truth is, I am so much less.”

Corvo’s arms squeezed hard around his lover. He opened his mouth to argue but the Outsider interrupted him.

“No, don’t. You don’t understand, and I don’t have time to explain it all.” 

Corvo felt the Outsider kiss the center of his chest. 

“Since the time I was made, I have seen everything that has passed, and so many things that could have been, other courses the world could have taken. But I cannot see past today. Today is the day I end.”

Corvo swallowed hard. The Outsider’s words sunk through him and seemed to hollow him out as they went. His thoughts broke apart and scattered. His heart, that had felt so overfull, felt suddenly empty. It was the headiness of being in free fall, helpless to do anything but dread the hurt that was coming. He felt the Outsider’s fingers go slack, his trembling embrace go still.

“I knew this before I came to you that first night. I had seen every other possibility fall away, dead branches shaken from a tree in a storm, and every path that remained plunged into the black.” The Outsider paused. Corvo had started stroking his hair.

“I have been so selfish. I wanted to taste this. I wanted pleasure, I wanted to turn away from the endless black in front of me. I wanted to know what it was to be close to some other person, one who wouldn’t prey on me. I never dared think you would give me _this_. This _impossible_ thing.”

Corvo’s hand brushed the Outsider’s hair back from his face, but his arms kept him close. He didn’t need to see his eyes. The sound of his voice, the feeling of his body, was enough. “What do you mean?”

“The Void watches everyone from the deepest parts of them, a pinprick in every soul, a replica in miniature of the wound in this world. I have seen the deepest hurt that a heart can sustain… I’ve seen people’s petty wants, their murderous desires all laid in front of me to witness. But I have also seen love. It’s as common as dirt. It’s precious the way water is precious; the most ordinary thing, but the thing that sustains all others. Its value is never known, until it’s lacked.

“But as common as it is, until _you_ , there was never so much as the smallest drop of it meant for me. The world does not know me. It never cared to. It shuns and reviles me. A beggar, a wretch living in the gutter, I was invisible. When the cultists took me, I was wanted, but in the way a serpent wants a rat. I have watched men build a religion founded on hating me. I’ve seen what they see: the world a fallen fruit rotting from the core, and me, the worm in its black center.”

“Outsider.” Corvo stopped him then. He tipped his head back to kiss him, hard and deep, urgency in the pressure of his mouth, his searching tongue. “I would have filled your cup--”

“I know that now.” The Outsider put his fingers to Corvo’s lips, quieting him. “Now that it’s too late, now that I must go and leave you with only fresh grief to thank you. How little it’s really worth, the foresight of a god.”

Corvo pulled his lover in tight again, kissing the crown of his head. “Now, Love, listen to me.”

The Outsider nodded against Corvo’s chest.

“I refuse to regret this. I could never wish to erase the time I’ve had with you, for however much longer I live on this earth. Everyone, every lover, has to say goodbye someday. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t love. That doesn’t mean you haven’t given me something golden that will stay with me as much as this pain.”

“But you’ve had enough. You have had enough pain and enough loss and I had never wished to heap more of it upon you…”

“No. You gave me love. You gave me _you_. We are all shaped by the people around us, the ones we love most of all. There are parts of me that have been moulded by your hands as much as the Heart was. I will carry this, and I will carry the memory of you. I just… would have kept you longer.”

“I would have given you more. I would have given you *all*. I am maimed and captive, I am half-dead with the numbness of centuries, and the broken parts of me that love you heave and struggle and shudder apart in the effort. But if I had a name I would give it to you first and most of all. I would give you my life, if I had one.”

The Outsider was trembling again. Corvo felt his fingers digging into his back, nails breaking the skin, but he didn’t flinch. He held on just as tight.

“Don’t go,” Corvo rasped, his eyes wet. “There has to be a way, there has to be something I can do!”

“I’m so sorry, Corvo. The age closes around us all like rows of black teeth. Even now I can see it looming ahead like the mouth of a tunnel. I wonder, after all this time, what it will be like to finally experience an ending. Even when I’m in your arms, a part of me…” He trailed off for a moment. Outside, dawn was breaking. “I am so tired, Corvo.”

The Outsider shook his head. “I am sorry,” he repeated, his voice a hoarse whisper. Then the grey light in the room soaked through him, erased him like a tide smoothing away furrows in the sand. The feeling of him, the mass and pressure of his bloodless body in Corvo’s arms, faded into a dream and fled like morning fog.

Later that day, some feeling passed over him like silent sigh and Corvo knew the touch of the Void was gone. A look passed between him and Emily and he excused himself from the council chambers without explanation. Through the safe room, there was an exit onto a balcony, and from there Corvo could run the rooftops. He found a place to perch, alone, only him and the wide grey sky. He crouched there and unwrapped his hand to find it blank while the pain of fresh loss settled in his gut.

He wept for a nameless man no one else knew well enough to mourn.


	8. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Overseers question a heretic who refuses, time and again, to even give his name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings apply for violence, torture, and mild sexual abuse.
> 
> I'm sorry. I promise you there's a light at the end of this tunnel.

The pain was very familiar.

The heat on the arch of his cheekbone and the throbbing, tight feeling of his eye swelling shut. The taste of blood in his mouth, this time from a split lip.

It reminded him of his father.

He couldn’t remember the man’s face. He couldn’t remember his voice with any clarity; only the way he barked and yelled. The things he called him while he beat his only son until his own knuckles bled. It almost made him smile, that this was all there was left of the man. A memory of brutality, carried in the mind of someone who had outlived him by aeons.

The bronze masks of the Overseers may as well have been his father’s face. If the features were nothing familiar, the expression was: The snarl of a mad dog.

He’d been in the chair for hours now, ankles and wrists cuffed. 

The door to the interrogation room stood open while the Overseers beyond it discussed what they would do next to try and break him. They wanted him to hear. But he trained his ears instead on a muted conversation further down the hallway.

“I can’t do it again. I… They can send me back to Whitecliff, they can do whatever they have to, but I can’t. I don’t know what else to say.”

“Brother, I told you, they’re not sending anyone back to Whitecliff anymore. You know why we do this. If they don’t obey, how can we protect anyone? And if--”

“--disobedience isn’t punished, then why would they obey, yes, I _know_. But… they were _children_ , Gustav. They were just little girls.”

“They were older than we were during the Trials of Aptitude. Old enough to know what obedience means.”

“Aren’t they supposed to be _spared_ the burdens that we take upon ourselves? Aren’t they _allowed_ to expect better than we’ve given them? Better than we got?”

“Torrence, expectations are one thing, hopes and dreams are one thing, but necessity is another! It’s been like this all over the Isles, people defying the strictures, defying the Abbey--”

“They’re afraid of us!”

There was a lapse. The captive man thought he could hear a stifled sob. Then the first Overseer spoke again.

“I’m sorry, Gustav. I can’t anymore. Do what you have to.”

Then he heard the click of a pistol hammer drawn back. After that, a gunshot. A body falling to the floor and being dragged away.

His questioners returned, masked as before. He could see their boredom in their posture, though. The way they hunched their shoulders, rocked back on their heels.

“Alright,” one of them grumbled, “Let’s try this again, shall we? State your name.”

He stayed silent, looking up and into the eyes of the bronze mask above him.

A fist struck him across the jaw. “Your _name_ , heretic. We’re not asking for your void-damned grandmother, just your bloody name!” Another fist, this time from the left, whipping his face to the side.

The captive felt as bored as his captors seemed to be. Finally, for the first time, he spoke to them. “This is tedious.” He spat blood onto the floor.

A gloved fist curled in his hair, yanked his head up. “Whose fucking fault is that?”

The captive didn’t reply.

“This is getting us nowhere,” the second Overseer commented. The questioner let the captive’s head drop, stepping away with a disgusted snarl. 

“Start heating the pliers.”

“You sure we wouldn’t get further with serum?”

“We’ve already wasted hours on this piece of shit. If he walks out of here with all his fingernails it’s going to look like we’re falling down on the job.”

The captive was watching the iron pliers rest in the brazier, the metal slowly starting to glow cherry red. His face was just as impassive as before.

There was nothing they could do to him that he hadn’t faced before. He had been beaten. He hadn’t been tortured but he’d seen it, thousands of times. He’d walked through the dreams and memories of the victims, wading through their pain and delirium.

Even the threat of death, even the _surety_ of it, wasn’t a novelty.

The Overseers added other irons to the fire and he thought of Corvo. He remembered watching him in Coldridge prison, weighing then the idea of giving his Mark. He remembered how they worked on him for days at a time, and Corvo had endured it, sunk so deep in a different sort of pain that the torturers' irons could barely reach him. He’d seen death in his eyes, the disgraced Royal Protector, and he had wondered; just whose death would it turn out to be?

For the second time that night, something rose up in him he didn’t expect. Not the white-hot fury that had sent him hurling bottles and insults at the Overseers in Battista. It was sympathy, pity at that memory, even as old as it was. He had pitied Corvo from the Void, but it had been cold and distant, and balanced with a measure of cynicism. Then, he had believed that once tried and tested, Corvo would fail as men always did.

Every day, every minute, he was discovering anew how numb he had been in the Void. He remembered Daud’s bitterness. “I don’t think the black-eyed bastard even cares,” he’d said. Maybe he had been right. Maybe he hadn’t cared the way he thought he had.

He had tried, though. He had tried to care, yet at the same time he had kept trying to care less. He had tried more than once to shut himself off from the misery of the world. He could have none of its pleasures so why should bear all of its pain?

Billie had been right. He should have been kinder. He should have offered comfort.

“Ah, worried now, are we?”

The Overseer held the red-hot pliers up in front of his face, mistaking his expression.

The nameless man pushed his thoughts away, and his face grew as blank and stoney as before.

Then they set the pliers to him.

The pain was unimaginable. They pulled, slowly, at the smallest nail on his left hand. They pulled and peeled it back while he jerked desperately against his bonds, unable to even think. He screamed, and the second Overseer shoved a leather bit into his open mouth and held it there.

Then the pull was over. His body went slack in the chair, his wounded hand still twitching with the searing, throbbing pain of his ruined nailbed. There were involuntary tears on his face when the questioner cupped his chin in his gloved hand.

“Your name.”

He was pale and shaking as he looked back up into the Overseer’s masked face. Yet he still didn’t answer.

They heated the pliers again. One of the Overseers held his head in place, made him watch the fire. Told him it didn’t have to be like this. Just answer their questions. He would break in the end, so why prolong it?

His thoughts stuttered with every pulse of agony from his finger. He thought of stories he could tell, ways he could make them stop. He should tell them he was an agent of the Royal Spymaster, sent to gather information on the Eyeless gang. He knew enough to make it plausible, enough he could even convince an ambassador if they sent for one.

But the lies died on his tongue, unspoken.

Hadn’t he watched Corvo go through this? Hadn’t he watched men put irons to his body and simply waited while the smell of his burning flesh had filled the room? Hadn’t he chosen to see him pushed to the brink before giving him the means to strike back?

They took the next nail and it was worse. He’d clenched his teeth, thinking he could steel himself against it, but he had ended up screaming out in pain again. The questioner took the bleeding ends of his fingers and squeezed them until he bit into the leather gag and sobbed.

Then they removed the gag again.

“Your name, heretic.”

Somehow he still found the strength to look to look them in the eyes. Still, he said nothing.

The pliers returned to the fire, but then, the door swung open.

The Vice Overseer wore no mask. He stood in the doorway with an elderly woman at his side, the woman garbed in the white uniform of the Blind Sisters.

Any one of the Sisters would know him on sight. What would it change, though? Perhaps they’d keep him longer, before they put him to death. But the man knew this woman’s face, her name, the things she kept hidden from all those around her. He knew there was a certain brand hidden under her coat.

Death was no longer the worst thing that could become of him.

“That’s enough for now, Brothers.” The Vice Overseer spoke calmly. “Sister Judith was curious about some of the things in Brother Callum’s report. She needs some time alone with this prisoner.”

The woman stepped past the threshold, and the questioners each bowed to her politely as they left. The door swung shut behind them, and the woman latched it.

She crossed the room slowly, her eyes on the captive, sharp and pale grey. She reached out to caress his bruised cheek and he jerked his face away, his eyes cold.

“So it’s true. It is ended, but not as Sister Rosewyn foresaw it.”

Sister Judith sat down on the short stool where his torturer had sat. “How do you like it, dear boy? To walk once more in the world, a pale, fragile thing without even the tatters of your former glory to wrap yourself in?”

He managed, at that, a crooked, bitter smile. But he said nothing.

“You still refuse to speak?” She sighed at that, shook her grey head. But he saw her look at the brazier and the irons glowing within it.

She opened the collar of her jacket, folded it back to show the brand he already knew was there. “We can bring you back,” she said. “Return you to your proper place. You will be safe, everlasting, surrounded by the adulation of the ones who made and keep you. The ones who have given you _everything_ , sweet boy.”

She reached for him again, and again he pulled away.

Instead she reached for his injured hand, clucking her tongue. “You’ve been marred already. Perhaps we _should_ search out another. Ah, but you were so striking...”

She didn’t let him pull away, then. She leaned over him when he pulled back as far as his bonds would let him. Her thin, gnarled hand trailed along his body from the angle of his jaw to the crotch of his trousers, grasping his sex through his clothes.

“ _Don’t touch me!_ ”

The door swung open and Sister Judith jerked her hand away, covered her brand. “I told you I was not to be disturbed!”

When she turned, the masked Overseer in the doorway plunged a long, black knife into her stomach. He twisted it, pulled it free, and sliced through her neck with the second stroke.

Then the Visage dropped away. In the Overseer’s place stood Billie Lurk, her red jacket splattered with blood.


	9. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billie and the former Outsider make their way home. He struggles his way though pain and terrible memories to find hands extended, ready to pull him up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings apply for CSA references and PTSD flashbacks.
> 
> Here, though, is the comfort part of the hurt/comfort. I'm not sure people realize how hard it can be to ask for help and accept it. Pain isn't pretty. I have major depression and tbh it's not all soft rainy sadness, it's rough and ugly and ugly things come out of me because of it. There's guilt and shame in needing help, the feeling that if I deserved help I wouldn't be so desperate for it in the first place. I put a fair chunk of myself into the Outsider when I'm writing this. I spent over a decade drowning in major depression before I got any kind of help. I was suicidal. I always think of him coming out of the Void as being like the first day my medication started to work, and I realized how far I'd been from normal, how I'd completely forgotten what normal even felt like. 
> 
> This got personal, huh. Anyways. Thank you for reading, extra thank you for comments. I am gonna go through and try to reply since I guess that's a thing people do on here? I'm completely new on AO3 and I do not know your ways. I used to write on FFN back before they banned all NC17 content and I just threw up my hands and left in disgust. I haven't written fic in ages. I'm _old_.

As Billie half-carried him out of the Abbey’s offices, the former Outsider was surprised how weak he felt. His legs shook under him. His vision swam, and pain still lanced through his fingers with every beat of his pulse.

She held him on his feet, his arm looped around her shoulders the same way he’d helped the old drunk in the Battista District. She even helped him lean against the wall in a darkened alley blocks away, let him relieve his straining bladder and piss into a drain. He was too tired and hurt to care about his dignity.

Yet apparently in Billie’s eyes he’d kept most of it. 

“Surprised you didn’t lose it when they started on your hands,” she murmured. Her voice was softer than he’d ever heard it. She was rubbing his back with her left hand. 

He might have felt more awkward for that, but he knew she wasn’t staring. He trusted her. “I’ve had practice.”

“Yeah. I bet you have.” Then her hand was scrubbing gently at the short hair on the back of his head. It was warm and comforting. 

As he buttoned his trousers his eyes scanned over the scattered graffiti on the wall. “See you in the Void, suckers.” But then above it, bolder, splattered and messy: “HE IS RISEN.” 

He is, the nameless man thought. And he’s having a rough time of it.

Billie put a hand on his shoulder. It was the second time she had seen him like this, trembling and overwhelmed, but maybe the first she’d seen him as hurt and as utterly vulnerable as he’d been when she’d finally reached him in the Ritual Hold.

She drew him into a hug. “You didn’t deserve this, either,” she murmured against his shoulder.

He kept silent a while, but his arms wrapped around her. He leaned against her and hugged her back. 

Had he ever known what he’d been missing, over centuries of watching moments like this one? Love, he thought again, was common as dirt. Love of parents for their children, love of spouses who had lived their lives side by side. Love of the closest of friends. He had seen the golden glow of people simply _touching_ , holding onto one another. He’d seen it roll back the darkness around them like a candle flame. Now he felt it firsthand. 

It wasn’t so small, up close. 

“Let’s get home…. If home’s still standing.” Billie rubbed his back one last time before she stepped away. 

Together they continued on, Billie guiding them through all the back streets and old rail tunnels around the bay towards Battista. Once or twice she lamented having sold her skiff for some extra coin before heading up the mountainside; it would’ve been much easier by canal, especially for him. When she had to she would loop an arm around his waist, displacing them both past obstacles or away from guards and street toughs.

It took hours, but they finally found themselves back at their small apartment. Back on the fire escape Billie had launched herself off of in the dark hours before dawn.

“That’s twice now you’ve rescued me.”

“Still not enough to earn your name?”

He smirked at her. “I’d like to see you try for a third.”

That was when he noticed there were lights on inside. And even more incomprehensibly, furniture.

While Billie reached for the doorknob, the man stepped back, frowning. “This can’t be right...” There was someone inside, and he could smell wood burning in the stove.

Billie opened the door. “Reese, I said to ‘hold down the fort’, not move in and decorate.”

“Yeah-huh. You’re welcome,” came the dry reply from the kitchen. The blonde woman turned from the stove, stepped around the partial wall that blocked her from view. She saw the man that Billie was still half-supporting and her blue eyes went wide with sympathy. “ _Shit!_ ”

Reese rushed over to him and together she and Billie helped him over to the sofa. “They really worked you over, fuck.” She picked up his left hand, tried to rub some of the blood away with her thumb. He winced when she accidentally squeezed his swollen fingers. 

“Fuck,” she repeated. “We need to clean these up. They’ll heal but it’s gonna be murder on you while they do. You look like you’ve lost a lot of blood, you’re pale as a ghost.”

From the kitchen, Billie scoffed. “Don’t worry _too_ much, he’s always that color.” She came back with a glass of water and passed it into his good hand.

They had a sofa. Even as the two women laid him down on it he stared down at it in perplexity. It wasn’t all they had. They had a kitchen table. Chairs. A big, gorgeous Tyvian rug on the floor, even if it was almost worn through in places.

“How did we… why do we have… furniture?” His speech was slurred and words came together sluggishly in his head. Whatever had kept him on his feet this far was fading.

That, and the sofa was very comfortable.

“Oh,” said Reese. Billie was also looking at her with her eyebrow raised. Reese chewed her lower lip for a moment, then addressed the nameless man. “My name’s Reese Kavanaugh. I run the Black Market in this part of town, so that’s how I’m acquainted with Billie. Still surprised me when she came by to _literally_ haul my ass out of a fire this morning.”

“Pfft.” Billie leaned against the wall near the kitchen table. “You’re unusually un-shitty for people in your line of work. Would’ve been a shame to lose you.”

“Heh.” Reese’s laugh was brief, but she was grinning. “Nice of you to say so. Anyhow, after Billie helped run the Abbey out of the district, I had a chance to return the favor, so I did. I ran into some, er, other clients, and asked them to pick up some things that nobody was coming back for. There’s a lot of empty homes right now.” Her tone grew subdued.

While Reese spoke, Billie rummaged a large doctor’s bag on the kitchen table. She came back with a vial of S&P, popped it open, and swapped it for the glass of water in the man’s hand. “Drink up,” she told him.

He sipped it. There was that pause, that abstracted look on his face. Billie had come to recognize that meant he was tasting something entirely new.

He took another drink. It was sweeter than he’d expected in that it was sweet at all. Slightly syrupy and mostly herbal, with a hint of cherry. “It’s… not bad,” he commented.

“It’ll help the blood loss and keep your wounds from getting infected.”

Reese hauled over the doctor’s bag and worked on his damaged fingers while he drank. She soaked them in a clear liquid, warning him it would sting at first. It did, for a moment, but after that it felt cold. After a minute longer, he felt nothing at all from his bare, bleeding nailbeds and his fingers felt wooden and inert. Reese cleaned them and wrapped them with expert care.

“I used to be a nurse,” she said, when Billie commented on her skill. “I still patch people up, people who can’t see a real doctor. You know how it is.”

“So, Nurse Kavanaugh, what comes next?” Billie had her jacket off, her sleeve rolled up.

Reese shrugged, but she gave Billie a bit of a slanted smile at the tease. “Uh, hmm. Laudanum, a bath, and bed rest, I’m thinking.”

“There’s a bed?” He felt a twinge of embarrassment at how excited he sounded.

“There’s two.” 

“You’ve got some pretty devoted clientele,” Billie observed.

“People just _love_ doctors.” Reese’s tone was dry in the extreme. She was rummaging her satchel, preparing a dose of laudanum. First a couple drops of dark reddish-brown fluid into a whiskey glass. She muddled a sugarcube into it, then added some amber liquor from a flask.

“This is bitter,” she said when she passed the glass to the nameless man. “Try to take it in one gulp.”

He did. Even with sugar the taste was strong and seemed to cling to the back of his mouth. It was bitter and familiar, and as a fog rolled over his exhausted mind it brought a thousand unwelcome memories. He should have refused the drug.

There were hands on his body. The two women, helping him up off the couch. The cultists pulling him out of his _kennel._ They were stripping him. He fought, his limbs heavy. Weak, uncoordinated, impotent. His mouth couldn’t find any words. What was the point? They did as they pleased with him, they never listened.

The rituals were always the same, even if the faces changed as they carted him from city to city. They drugged him first. They said it made him “biddable.” Without it he was willful, they said. Stubborn, with a sharp tongue. A snide, ungrateful little wretch. 

He had still thought the cage was better than the streets. Nothing they demanded of him was worse than things he would do sometimes for coin, for food. 

They would strip him. They would bathe him in cold water, scrub him clean, mark his palms with symbols, adorn his hands with rings. They would drape him in robes of rich purple, like a king. 

Then there would be more drugs to help the visions come. They would make his limbs too heavy to move, and when he tried to find any shred of that willfulness they accused him of, his thoughts slipped through his fingers, wafted away from him like the scented smoke that wreathed him during the rites. 

After the prophecies were given they laid him down. When they touched him it felt strange, but his body responded. His body accepted. And when what they did began to hurt, the drugs softened the pain.

Now different voices, warmer voices were entreating him for something. His thoughts grabbed after them, trying to drag himself back from the place the laudanum was taking him. He was remembering ropes on his wrists. He remembered submitting, succumbing. He remembered what came next.

He fought harder. He struck out.

The voices grew louder, sharper. The words still slipped past him without comprehension, until something reached him. A hand thrust below the wavering surface of the ocean he was drowning in.

“ _Outsider!_ ”

“That is _not_ my name!”

He broke through. It was the present again. He was not that boy anymore.

He was a man, wounded and trembling, his face a rictus of rage and fear. Tears streaking over blood and bruises. Two women grasping his shoulders. The concern in their eyes sunk deep into him, too deep, and he wanted to flinch away, to push it back. He didn’t want their pity. He didn’t want to feel this. He didn’t want to need them.

“Look at me,” said Billie. Her voice was strong, even, steady. “You know me.”

He managed a stiff nod.

“Breathe.”

He tried. 

“No. Breathe in deep. Come on. You can do this.”

He did.

“Now hold it. Alright, now let it out _slowly_. Like that.” Her hands squeezed his shoulders, kneaded them. “Do it again. That’s right, slowly.”

He did. He realized he was in the hallway, his back against the wall. He didn’t remember how he got there. His jacket was open, and the shirt under it was torn. While Billie held onto his shoulders, Reese stood just behind her, silent and watchful.

“I’ve got you,” Billie said.

With the bitterness of the laudanum in the back of his throat, he half-wished that she hadn’t. _Snide, ungrateful little wretch._ Yet, only half-wished. He needed someone, needed help, protection, solace, a hundred things, a thousand he felt starved for. But all of it reminded him how _weak_ he was. To cry for help was to admit that he was helpless.

“Talk to me,” Billie said.

He swallowed. “I can take care of myself.”

“I know.”

It wasn’t the answer he expected. “Then let go of me.” His tone was sharper than he’d meant it to be.

Billie did. He let his back slide down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, arms braced on his knees.

She crouched with him. Reese sat beside her.

“You can do this alone if you want to,” Billie said. “You’re in a bad place but you’ll get through it. But you need to understand: you don’t _have_ to. You’ve got a choice.”

Reese spoke up with a quiet voice. “I don’t know all of what you’ve been through,” she tendered, “but… I want to help. I’ve been through some rough spots and I wished to the Void and back that I’d had somebody.”

“I know,” he said, lowering his head. He closed his eyes for a moment, tried forcing his thoughts into focus. Helping him was their choice. Just like the choice he’d made every time he’d offered his Mark to someone, for good or ill. The desperate, the helpless, the hurt. Because helping them was the way he showed himself things could be different. Things could be better.

It was the same for them. It was where they found their strength. It was where he had found his. 

“I don’t want to be alone,” he said. His voice was calm, his eyes weary.

Billie took his hand. A moment later Reese took the other. “We’re right here,” Billie said. “We’re not going anywhere.”


	10. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billie, Reese, and their anonymous friend discuss the Abbey raid over breakfast and a cup of coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Domesticity: High  
> Fluff: Moderate

Reese was leaning against the edge of the kitchen table, a mug of coffee cupped in her thin hands. Billie let her gaze just rest on her. The rosiness of her knuckles, the way her hands always looked freshly scrubbed. The dark circles under her eyes that had been there even before the raid, before shit hit the fan. The way those eyes were so beautiful they drew her in every time they looked back at her. Billie could tell from the way Reese acted, her cageyness, her tight and slanted smile, the tiny hints of self-deprecation that bubbled to the surface now and then: Reese had no idea how captivating she really was.

The eye could see other things about her, too. Things below the surface. A dim smear of red low on Reese’s belly: a lost pregnancy from many years ago, a womb left barren. But in her chest, a bright spark of cool, pure white. Her strength. She had found the center of herself and she kept true to it.

Reese had stayed the night. While Billie had slept beside her wounded friend, Reese had taken the sofa. In the early morning they’d sat together, Billie mending his shirt while Reese worked on washing the blood out of his jacket.

Reese had asked if he was really the Outsider. Billie had taken a deep breath and said yes. He used to be.

Then the whole story had come out, while they hung his clothes to dry, while they brewed the first pot of coffee; while Billie started to dice some potatoes and core some peppers. She had doubted Reese would believe even half of it. 

Yet Reese had looked astonished but not incredulous. She could see the eye on Billie’s face. She’d recognized for a while there was something strange about Billie’s right hand, something her eyes and her thoughts kept refusing to focus on. She’d seen Billie do the impossible, and she’d heard rumors of even more spectacular feats. From Billie’s lips, it all seemed plausible.

When Billie told her not to be afraid of the nameless man down the hall, Reese had uttered a short chuckle. She said she trusted her own eyes more than hearsay, and _far_ more than stories from the Abbey. What she saw in that man was tangible proof that everything Billie had told her was true. That, and however he might be on a normal day, at the moment he was as pitiable as a kicked puppy.

He was someone who’d been used, who had struggled, who had been badly hurt. He was just like them.

“So you met this guy? Christofer Jeorge?” Reese was unfolding the day’s Karnaca Gazette. “Abbey Raids Battista Mining District,” the headline read. “Families flee, fight back.”

“He was reporting on the Cienfuegos murder. I got him some dirt on Jacobi and how the whole thing linked back to the Eyeless and the Spectre club.”

“Apparently he got out here before they even started putting the fires out.”

Billie hmphed. “Sounds about right. When I met him, a couple of Eyeless had just worked him over. He just lit a cigar and kept typing. So, what’s he-- Hey, look who’s re-joined the land of the living.”

Their unnamed friend was standing at the hallway entry in his slacks, feet bare and shirt untucked, watching them with tired eyes. His expression was thoughtful, intense, and typically difficult to read, made moreso by the bruise swelling shut his left eye. Billie went back to stirring the food in the huge cast-iron skilled she had on the stove. Reese set down her cup and went to pour the man some coffee.

“You sleep alright? Cream? Sugar?”

He pulled out a chair at the kitchen table, his gaze fixed on the surface in front of him. After giving it a level of consideration that seemed excessive, he answered tersely, “Cream, please. No sugar.”

Reese shrugged, served him a mug of coffee with cream. After pausing a moment to contemplate the fact that she had just poured a cup of coffee for the _Outsider_ , she returned to her conversation with Billie. “So the paper says the Abbey’s claiming mass ‘heretical insubordination’ from all over the Empire.”

“Everything they’ve built is crumbling now, and they’ve slapped away every hand that might have helped them shore up their high walls.” The nameless man watched the cream swirl in his coffee. “For over a century, they have taken every child who could hear the whispers of the Void. They’ve claimed necessity and duty as they’ve torn families apart. They’ve claimed to protect the flock as they’ve put children to death in their Trials. Yet for all the bloody sacrifices they’ve demanded, they were impotent against Delilah’s coup.

“They were decimated in the city of Dunwall. Then here in Karnaca, in the Cyria gardens, they fared no better.” He glanced at Billie, his expression unreadable as before. “Now the men and women of the Empire hide their children from the Overseers. They tell them when they see those brazen masks, to run. The Abbey frets and plots over how to restore their dwindling numbers. They look to the prey they think weakest to grind under the boot, but they’ve forgotten. They’re outnumbered.”

Billie listened to it all impassively while she began to scrape the bottom of the pan with a metal spatula, serving up plates of what she’d been cooking. Reese, on the other hand, stared. It was her first exposure to one of his monologues.

“That’s… heavy stuff.”

“Looks like someone’s back in proper form,” Billie said dryly. She set down a plate in front of each of them. It was a mixture of potatoes, carrots, onions, peppers, and some serkonan sausage, all of it cooked tender and browned in the pan. It was “nothing fancy,” Billie said, but the pair at the breakfast table sank their forks into it immediately.

Billie sat down with a plate of her own and fresh cup of coffee. Reese continued to scan over the newspaper, turning the page while she chewed on a mouthful of food.

“Says here to expect an afternoon edition after the Gazette gets a chance to talk to Duke Abele. But the Grand Guard is saying the raid wasn’t cleared with them. Says ‘Prominent Battista resident Aramis Stilton and Lucia Pastor of the Shindaerey Miners’ Family Committee have come together to demand a formal apology from the Abbey of the Everyman, but current circumstances within the Abbey make it impossible to know to whom they should address their grievances. They stated jointly that they will seek the return of all seized property as well as restitution to the families of those summarily executed in the raid. No authority within the Abbey could be reached for comment.’”

Billie let out a low whistle.

The nameless man was picking over his breakfast, separating out the bits of sausage and piling them to one side of his plate. He gave Billie a tight, crooked smile. “Sounds like you got them all.”

Reese stared at Billie but ate another mouthful. Billie worried for a moment that Reese was thinking of the blood on her hands, wondering if she should be afraid of her. But when she swallowed, her only comment was “All that _and_ a great cook.”

Billie let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

“Billie,” Reese said, her voice softer as she reached across the table for her hand. “I’m all in, with you. The Abbey took my little brother. They ripped him right out of my arms when I was twelve. _Fuck_ them. They’ve had this coming. They come in here with guns and knives and torches and they murder innocent people, but they get to call it ‘execution’. All in the name of ‘protecting’ us from somebody who, it turns out, isn’t as much of a monster as they are.”

The man looked at Reese, then at Billie with a brow arched for an instant. But that topic could wait. “There are no innocents within the Abbey. They take great pains to weed them out, and every Overseer given a mask is blooded first at Whitecliff. They’ve waged war on the helpless and the desperate for decades. You took up arms and fought back for those who couldn’t fight for themselves.”

Billie took that in, then washed it down with a sip of hot coffee. She looked at the faces of the two people at the table with her and she turned over her palm, gave Reese’s hand a squeeze.

“This is good,” the nameless man said after another fork-full. The look on his face was intense, abstracted, as if he was immersed up to his neck in the experience of _eating breakfast_. “I think I like peppers.”

Reese exchanged a look with Billie. The juxtaposition between what both of them could only call “heavy shit” and then complete mundanity made her head spin. Billie felt about the same.

“You get used to him,” Billie reassured her.

“How much did you tell her?” The man sat back, nothing left on his plate but the pile of chopped sausage to one side of it. He looked at Reese and sipped his coffee.

“The whole story. I trust her.”

The man was still looking at Reese when he replied. “Good.”

Billie had expected more of a fight. The former Outsider had always seemed attached to his secrets. “Just… good?”

“Yes. It simplifies things. She’s done a great deal for us both. I would have been surprised if you could still be comfortable lying to her.”

“Glad you see it that way,” Reese said, a bit of redness in her cheeks from being the subject of a discussion taking place right in front of her. She thought she heard a subtle barb under the man’s reply to Billie, and it bothered her. “It’s true. You’re really the Outsider.”

“Was, and not by choice.”

“What should I call you, then?”

“Call me whatever you please, Reese Kavanaugh.” He sipped his coffee again, a restrained smirk appearing on his lips while he did. “Billie’s fond of ‘little shit’.”

“It fits.”

Reese snickered behind her hand. “Alright then, Mister Black.”

The nameless man stared at her, a slight angle to his head. His intensity focused itself on Reese, but his expression softened after an instant. “I think I’ll keep that. Thank you.”

That suited him, too, Billie thought.

When the former Outsider leaned back in his chair, gaze flickering between the two of them, Billie stared back. It wasn’t the first time she’d settled her Eye on him, but he looked different today. The pain in his body was visible, pulsing red from his head and his hand. But beneath it there was an eddying darkness. That, she thought, was the kind of pain that doesn’t just belong to the body. The kind of pain that could swallow a person whole.

He looked back into the eye, and he bowed his head. He knew what she could do with it, Billie thought. He knew and he was… submitting to it, maybe. Did he regret giving her this? This thing that marred her face, that marked her, that blazed with power she hadn’t asked for.

Then, at length, he said “There’s something I need to do for you both,” and he reached across the table. “Give me your hand,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.”

Why did it take him saying it, for Billie to recognize the corner of her mind that still thought he might? After a second of hesitation she held out the arm he’d given her, and he took it carefully by the wrist.

Turning Billie’s hand palm upward, he placed Reese’s hand in hers.

“Billie told me about this,” Reese said, her voice low. “It’s still… I can feel that it’s different, but I can’t see it. My eyes just sort of...slide right off.”

“I know. This will help. Billie, take her hand and press it to the Eye.”

Billie did. Reese’s palm covered the eye, cupped against her face. The touch was tender.

“Close your other eye. Use the Void to see into her. Let your vision leave your body. Let it wrap around this person. Let it rise like a flood, let it seep into the pores of her skin and wash through her. Let it ride in on her breath…”

His voice was hypnotic. It made her feel the power of her vision like a thing she could mold and shape, or a river she could channel.

He spoke to Reese then. “Reese, think about breathing in. The warmest corners of your heart, the places that tell you to trust Billie -- draw your breath from those depths. Invite her, accept her. Let her into you.”

She heard Reese utter a breathless “oh…” as she did, as the boundaries between them blurred.

“Look at yourself with her eyes, Billie. Teach her eyes to see your hand.”

It was one thing to know, in your mind, that what you could see about another person was the thinnest sliver of everything they truly were. It was one thing to know that every person had their own will, their own way of seeing the world. But to feel your mind press up against a _self_ as deep, as rich, as strong as your own, was another thing entirely. It was intense, uncomfortably intimate. Billie could feel their thoughts, their feelings threading together. It felt crowded, too much in her head, too much in her heart, almost enough to drown her.

She saw herself with Reese’s eyes. There was a cascade of feeling, fascination, at the delicate angles of her own jawline, the shape of her lips, the space between them when they parted as they did now. Infatuation, adulation, warmth blossoming in her chest like new flower, swelling in her throat, tracing the bottom lids of Reese’s widening eyes. Reese’s hand trembling under her own while the other woman gasped, “ _Billie…!_ ”

The hand came into focus. The two women dropped back into their chairs again, staring at one another across the table. It was as if they’d had only the dimmest impression of one another, glimpses through a thick haze, up until then. The past night, Billie had thought she could trust Reese. Now, she _knew_.


	11. Interlude 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily Kaldwin finds time for an evening run with her father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween, my dudes.

“It’s this way,” Emily said, glancing back over her shoulder.

Her father wasn’t far behind. It was close to sundown on what had been a clear day, and the sky, the brick buildings were all painted in hues of red and gold. Red sky at night, whaler’s delight; the rhyme played through Emily’s head. From where they stood, where the distillery district met the edge of Rudshore, they could see the eastern horizon turning deep, intense blue.

Emily wished it hadn’t taken most of a week to find time for this. Since the Mark had vanished from them both, something hadn’t been right with her father. He’d been trying to hide it, but it was present whenever he thought she wasn’t looking; his eyes were tired, his thoughts miles away. 

She had seen it before, as a child. She remembered finally noticing it, part of a year after her coronation; that the tenderness in his eyes, the gentle smiles he gave her, weren’t there when he faced the rest of the world. Then it occurred to her that she couldn’t see his face while he stood behind the throne, and that maybe there was a reason for that. She had come to realize that all the times he sat out in the gazebo with a cigar and a bottle of whiskey, he was quietly grieving. That even years after they both had lost mother, he was still grieving.

But why was he grieving _now?_ Had the Mark meant that much to him?

All she knew for certain was that her heart hurt to see him like this. She wanted time with him, time alone, time sharing the kind of moments that could belong only to the two of them together. Running together, both of them swift and strong and free, and revelling in it.

There were times she returned to the tower by the shore, where she used to sleep. It had grown even more dilapidated by the time Corvo had been willing to let her cross Kaldwin’s Bridge on her own. She had found there, at the highest point she could reach, a shrine to the Outsider.

She had never disturbed it. Even in the years before the Outsider had spoken to her, she’d seen some strange beauty in it and thought, to _someone_ , this was a sacred thing. A sacred place. The wall facing the sea was broken apart and almost entirely missing, and she had spent long moments sitting with the shrine at her back like a silent companion, watching the ocean and the endless sky.

“Rudshore’s looking good these days.” Corvo was looking out over the district, wind tousling his hair. He was always better after a run. It brought him out of his thoughts, into the moment. It was another way they were so alike, Emily thought. Things like this came easily to them; it was the diplomacy, the hours spent indoors, conferring, pouring over things that seemed like minutiae but added up to create a larger, nuanced whole -- that was hard.

He was right. As the sun sank lower and the deep cerulean of twilight overtook the sky, the streetlamps and the upper storey windows were lighting up. In her early days on the throne, she had funded the construction of a large sea-wall and had the district drained and gradually rebuilt, with the street level raised one storey higher than before. 

Some of that work had been at her father’s urging; the district had become a haven for gang activity and squatters, most notably the Whalers. If they breathed life back into those flooded streets, it would drive them back underground.

“Not bad,” she said, smiling. “Now to get the Tower District back into shape.”

“It’s on its way,” Corvo answered, his hand on her shoulder.

Emily patted his knuckles and continued on, looping back towards the Distillery District. Corvo was never far behind. There had never been a single moment, Emily believed, that he hadn’t had her back. And as long as he lived, there never would be.

She led him in a sprint, a grin on her face. She remembered the first time she’d seen him having to struggle to keep up. He was tall and he was almost unbelievably fast for a man his size, but Emily was still lighter, faster. Then, as now, he’d been nothing but utterly proud of her.

She saw it in his face when they finally came to a halt at the base of the old tower. He was grinning at her as he caught his breath. It was the first smile she’d seen from him in a while.

“And up we go,” she said, vaulting herself onto a stack of old crates, finding hand- and footholds in the crumbling brick. He grunted as he heaved himself after her.

Emily wasn’t sure what she’d expected when they reached the shrine. Maybe it would have gone dim, the power of the place vanished like their Marks. Maybe it would be the same as ever, bone runes singing on the altar, purple motes swirling from the lamps; their ‘old friend’ drawing them into a trance to say hello.

But what waited there was neither of those. The shrine was thrown over, its brittle wood scattered and broken, the drapery ragged and rent apart. But there were flowers heaped upon it, living flowers growing, vines training up the walls and over the pile of splintered wood.

The walls were painted, almost every inch of them, but not the runes and symbols of witchcraft that Emily had come to know. They were almost like children’s drawings: whales, birds, flowering vines. The sun and moon, stars and clouds. There was more refinement, more skill in them, but the same sort of unrestrained joy.

And above the ruined shrine, there were three words:  
“HE IS RISEN.”

Emily looked over her shoulder to see her father staring at those words with his lips parted and his heart in his eyes.


	12. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arguments happen. Billie and Reese clash with the nameless man and find a silver tongue sharper than some knives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes (frequently) I do shit and realize, hey, I'm not holding it together as well as I thought I was. I think this is one of those moments for the former Outsider.

Days passed, wounds healed and bruises faded. Reese made daily visits to change the dressing on the nameless man’s fingers, or at least that was the excuse presented. She may not have needed an excuse to come and talk to Billie, but it took some pressure off them both to provide one anyway.

Billie had recovered his journal, and almost all his time was spent writing in it. He spent long hours listening to Billie and Reese talking at the kitchen table while he sat surrounded by his candles, squinting at the pages, absorbed in whatever he wrote.

He never left the apartment. He claimed he had no reason to. And besides, as the Month of Rain reached its closing, the weather was wet and grey.

It was on one of those grey, wet days that Reese came bearing a gift. It wasn’t uncommon for her to bring some staple for the household when she visited. But this was the first time the nameless man had raised his head from his writing and bluntly refused.

“No whale oil.”

“It’s the refined kind, it’s not going to burn the place down.” Billie stepped in.

“I thought you could use some better light,” Reese said.

“I neither need nor want this.” His tone was icy.

Reese only shrugged, picked the lamp back up and tucked it under her arm. But Billie touched her shoulder, urging her to wait.

“She’s trying to help. You could show a little gratitude.”

He closed his journal and raised his head, looking Billie in the eye. “Should I be grateful for a gift I never asked for? Billie Lurk, you have peeled back all the lies this world kept you swaddled in, seen the truth behind all the secret symbols. You’ve trod across the black center of this world, walked tall in places forbidden to everyone, and you still claim not to know why I refuse this. Get it out of my sight.”  
“Don’t you _dare_ talk down to me. Not after all the shit you have put me through. Not when you put this eye on my face yourself.”

Billie had seen the way his eyes turned almost wolfish with intensity when something bothered him. It was the first time she’d had that look directed at her in a while, though. The first time since she’d brought him out of the Void.

“Every power comes at a price. I gave you all you needed to walk the path you were set upon, and all you had to give up for it was agony and constant nightmares.”

“That and _any_ chance of anonymity, so _thank you very much_ for that. At least I can see farther while I’m looking over my shoulder!”

While Billie’s temper burned hot, his grew colder. “Generous for someone who knew you were plotting his death, don’t you think? Now, will you take that carnage away from me?”

Reese walked over to where he sat and leaned against the table, braced there with both hands. “Alright, Mister Black, listen. I know who you used to be. But when I told Billie I wasn’t afraid of you, I meant it. I am _really_ not afraid of you.”

They stared each other down. Reese’s gaze was steady and cool, her eyes losing none of their openness even as they gained a touch of steel. “So I’m going to tell you that I’ve been paying attention. I’ve noticed the little _things_ you say to Billie and I kept wondering why you say them. Wondering, were trying to get under her skin? Trying bait her into a fight? Or what?”

The man leaned back in his chair. “The impulse is admirable, but Billie Lurk doesn’t need you to defend her, least of all from me. She had me at the end of a knife a week ago to this day, and then, I was still a god.”

“You keep coming back to that,” Reese said. “After everything she’s done, you keep pointing out that she’s a killer. She’s a killer who saved your skin, twice! Isn’t that enough for you to show a little charity by not smacking her in the face with it? I’m done telling myself the situation’s complicated. I’m done making excuses for you. Maybe you’re not a monster, but you’re starting to seem like a pretty shitty person.”

“And you, on the other hand, walked the moral high road all the way here to the Battista District? It was here or the gallows, wasn’t it, when the Grand Guard traced all that illegal laudanum back to your doorstep. I’ve seen so many futures where they catch you, yet here we are, both hiding under the same rock. You only keep dodging the hangman’s noose by riding the ripples left in Billie’s wake. I think you’re well aware of that, Reese Kavanaugh, and it’s the only reason you’re not halfway to Saggunto by now. ”

Reese dropped the lamp. It fell with a thud, rolled a slow curve on the floor. She stood, livid, shaking, and the man at the table realized he’d gone too far.

She was out the door before he could find a way to un-say his own words.

The look on Billie’s face was worse. The moment of time stretching out inexplicably, when he realised, patterns repeat themselves. She would choose Reese. She would break with him. She would side with the victim, again, every time. 

Yet she didn’t look angry, truly. He’d seen her rage. Worse, she looked betrayed.

He started to rise but she was already pulling on her jacket. “Billie--”

“Not one fucking word.” 

She turned up her collar, pulled up her scarf, stepped through the open door. “Don’t wait up for me.”

The door slammed and she was gone. 

A knot of sickness settled in the man’s stomach and he knew he wouldn’t sleep that night. He was going to spend it alone with his own sharp words, alone with the bitter tongue that had spoken them. Alone, faced with the side of himself that had no faith in anyone, that was willing to wring the warmth out of the rest of him to keep itself safe.

That side of him hoarded pain like it was treasure. That side revisited every injury he’d ever known, a revelry as depraved as the rite that had made him a god. It promised in whispers that he had to remember all of it. If he forgot it would all happen again. But what was the value of safety that sacrificed everything it was meant to preserve? He had been ‘safe’ in the Ritual Hold.

He pressed his fingers into the still-tender bruises on the side of his face. He wished he could strike out at that side of himself, beat it down. If he loved pain so much, couldn’t he take his fill of it on his own?

He tried to write. Nothing inside him wanted to become words. It was all the snarling and howling of a wounded animal.

It was too quiet without her. Somehow, even rooms away, some part of him had become _aware_ of her, her pulse and her breathing sensed even below his hearing whenever she was home. It had been barely a week and he was so accustomed to her presence that it had become a refuge.

This wasn’t home without her.

She would be back soon, when both their tempers had cooled. He told himself that as the night wore on, as he tried to focus his mind on whatever chores he could find to keep him busy. He told himself again as the sky began to lighten and he’d started the cycle of nodding off and jerking himself awake. He told himself yet again as sunrise was hours past and she still hadn’t come through the door.

Then he’d risen, pulled his coat on, and headed for the streets to look for her.

He spent some time at first just wandering, a slow, light rain falling on his head. The road up to the main square had a view of all the districts below, the tiered neighborhoods leading down to the coast like stair-steps, and the long chutes and windmills of the wind corridor. 

This city, he thought, and all the secret wars within it. Fortunes made and lives broken. Decay that nothing can halt, yet they continue to build anew, like children making sand-castles for the tide to wash away. Do they love this place? This city cannot love them back. Brick and mortar can give shelter but not sanctuary.

“That,” he murmured to himself alone at the balustrade, “we all must find in one another. Even me, now.” If he could even rebuild what he’d torn down.

He looked down at his own hands, resting on the stone. He’d been prideful. He’d clashed against people who had shown him only kindness and it had been fruitless, foolish, and entirely his own fault.

He was, after all, a snide, ungrateful little wretch.

Billie could go anywhere, and she could do it unseen, but Reese? He could find her. All he needed to do was look for the sign.


	13. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billie Lurk spends the night at Reese Kavanaugh's apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: CONTAINS SMUT.
> 
> f//f, which I am not sure I've ever written even though I've certainly done a lot of it. Slow going because I found myself colliding with a brick wall of my own body issues. Shoutout to both my partner abyssdreams and to bzarcher (old friend mostly active in Overwatch fandom) for a lot of advice and feedback that helped.
> 
> Anyhow, you'll learn a lot about Reese in this chapter. And her apartment is like... Karnaca shabby chic. Because I'm some kind of pottery barn browsing etsy loving whore.

“Reese, wait!”

The rain was pouring down, and Reese was running through it, running for the awnings on the far side of the street. Billie was already standing beneath them by the time she reached them, an impossibility Reese knew she should have expected. Just like the way Billie caught her in her arms and pulled her in close.

She sobbed against Billie’s chest. “He’s a fucking bastard! I should take that whale oil and set his fucking bed on fire!” She could feel Billie’s warmth under the cold, wet leather she pressed her face into. 

“We can do that later,” Billie promised. “Let’s get out of the rain, first.”

Reese led the way to her new place. Since the raid, people and businesses had abandoned the district. Rents were low, and she’d been able to take advantage of that. She’d had a basement before; now she had an entire building.

There were two entries she hadn’t shuttered, and both of them were tucked away below street level at the front and rear of the building; one for customers, the other for deliveries. There was a cargo elevator with a cage she could lock at every floor it served; she could use it to get wounded people to the small room on the first floor she’d been setting up as a clinic. 

Then, on the second floor, was her apartment. She and Billie stood together at the door at the top of the stairs while Reese turned her key in the lock.

It wasn’t rich by any means, but it was nice. Rain fell in a steady patter onto the skylight over the main room. Most of the walls were bare brick, but it had all been painted white, which made the space feel open and serene. The furniture was all either profoundly worn, or improvised from crates, pallets, and spare cushions. There were lamps and candle-holders made from old bottles, shelf brackets from rusted pipes, curtains from stitched-together flour sacks or old threadbare sheets.

There were boxes stacked in the kitchen and against the living room wall; Reese was still moving in. She flipped a switch and some overhead lights turned on, their glow slowly brightening. They each hung their coats on hooks near the door, and Reese put down some folded newspapers to catch the drips.

“How about dinner?” Reese sounded weary, wrung out from her upset. “I’ve got some pike fillets and a bottle of Gristolian white. It’d be nice to cook for you for a change.”

Reese was reaching for a cabinet pull when she felt Billie’s arms around her from behind. “Hey. Slow down.”

Billie pulled her back, pressed her lips against the top of Reese’s shoulder and held her. 

Reese rocked back on her heels, leaned into the embrace. She let out a shuddering breath. “Everything he said was true.”

“Doesn’t change a thing, Reese.”

“But… shouldn’t it? I know what it does, laudanum, opium. I’ve seen it. I don’t know what kind of people my clients are, good or bad or just in pain, but... I don’t know who might be dead because of me.”

“I’ve lost count of the lives I’ve ended.” Billie murmured into the place where Reese’s shoulder curved into her neck. “And I know I’ve done wrong. All the guilt is squarely on my shoulders.”

Reese tugged at Billie’s arms where her wrists crossed at her waist. She freed herself only enough to turn around in that embrace and return it with her arms around Billie’s shoulders.  
“I still think you’re a good person. I still felt around inside your head, and I know what I saw. Somebody strong enough to stay kind.”

“Well,” Billie murmured against Reese’s ear. “There’s your answer, too. _You_ are more than your history.” She squeezed Reese tight, and then Reese’s lips found hers and they were kissing; careful and restrained. What passed between them was as warm and soft as a breath. 

“It’s a long and shitty ride, but I want to tell you everything.”

Billie promised to listen, and popped the cork on that bottle of Gristolian white. Reese stood over the stove, two fish fillets in the pan, rubbed with salt and sprinkled with herbs.

Reese was a widow. She’d been married to a man named Henry Winstead, a doctor from Dunwall. The plague had taken her parents, and with her home about to be burned down by the quarantine patrols, Reese had taken Henry’s proposal out of desperation. When they’d left together for Cullero, all of Reese’s meager belongings had fit in a single trunk with room to spare.

Henry had been a mediocre doctor and an indifferent husband. He drank, gambled, spent money without a thought or care. The majority of the work at the clinic had been shuffled onto Reese as he’d spent more and more time living in a laudanum-induced torpor.

“Then I got pregnant, and I thought… I didn’t know how I’d be able to raise a child when I was the only one holding the practice together. He’d been dealing laudanum on the side, more and more, but he spent money as fast as it came in. But... I got lucky, I guess.” Reese had paused then to finish her glass of wine. “I lost the baby.”

“I remember the day I felt the first pains. The day the bleeding started. Henry shrugged it off as nothing and just went back to the couch where he used to dose himself. He said it would ‘sort itself out.’ But the bleeding didn’t stop. The pain got worse, and the blood turned dark and it _stank_. I had a fever so bad I couldn’t even remember my own name. But I still remembered how _funny_ it was, stumbling through the streets to get to a …” She laughed bitterly. “A _Doctor_.”

Reese untucked her shirt, pushed down the high waist of her trousers and showed a thick, red scar on her belly. “Surgeon took the whole thing out. My womb, the carcass rotting inside it. I almost died. I lost most of a week, delirious and barely hanging on. When I woke up I found out nobody’d come looking for me, nobody’d asked after me. The nurse there gave me some S&P and a pat on the shoulder and sent me home, and I realized I had to get out. I couldn’t keep pretending the way I was living wasn’t going to kill me.”

She’d spent months doing her best to squirrel away some money, but her husband had saved her the effort, in the end. He’d confused a bottle of laudanum for a bottle of paregoric, and she’d found him on that study sofa. She’d been surprised how much it still hurt to lose him. She had never loved him, and he’d clearly considered a wife to be a kind of unpaid servant. But his death had been sad and pointless, and she hadn’t wished that on him.

She hadn’t wanted to be left behind to settle all his debts, either. She’d found all the false credentials he used to acquire opium without any authority realizing just how much of it was passing into his hands. She’d known how to use those forgeries, and it had been the only thing that had kept a roof over her head. Without the accreditation to practice as a doctor, she’d lost her house, and with that gone, she’d traveled to Karnaca to start over.

“The opium was still my mainstay. Plenty of wealthy buyers, and I still had all the connections. I don’t really know what tipped off the Grand Guard, but the whole city got turned upside-down a couple weeks after the coup. They don’t have my name yet, but they have some of the pseudonyms I was using to place orders, I’m pretty sure. I dropped it all, and after a few weeks, this is where I ended up.”

They had both cleaned their plates by the time Reese finished her story. “Where do you think you’ll go from here?”

“Actually… I’m planning to stay,” Reese answered. “It takes time and money to get licensed as a doctor, but that’s my endgame. Times like a few nights ago, helping Mr. Black -- that’s when I feel like I’m doing some good in this world. Like my life means something.”

“He’ll get over whatever the fuck that was,” Billie sighed. “I haven’t known him long but he wasn’t like this before the Abbey got him. It’s just tricky because I don’t know if it’s time he needs, or a kick in the pants.”

“We can think about that tomorrow,” Reese said, pouring wine into each of their glasses. 

Minutes later they were stripping in Reese’s bathroom while hot water filled a massive claw-foot bathtub. The tone of their conversation changed, Billie regaling Reese with stories of what it had been like to travel with the fabled and cantankerous Anton Sokolov, and the way Empress Emily had tried to cook porridge one morning on the Dreadful Wale and somehow spectacularly failed, nearly starting a fire in the process.

Then they were just together, breathing together in silence with the room lit by candles, Reese leaning back against Billie, Billie’s arm loosely wrapped around her. Her other arm was unbuckled from her, set aside for the evening.

Billie kissed the rim of Reese’s ear. She heard the woman in her arms exhale softly, and she brushed her lips against the side of her neck. She traced a slow path along the center of her sternum with the fingers of her left hand; traced the curve under her small breast before she cupped it in her palm and felt her nipple tighten. 

Reese arched into the touch, her head leaning back on Billie’s shoulder.

Billie’s fingers teased along Reese’s throat, traced the shape of her open lips. “I’m all in with you, too,” Billie murmured.

Reese turned in Billie’s embrace, in Billie’s lap. She leaned against her, their skin warm and wet against one another. Billie had only a few scars on her body that Reese could find with either her hands or her eyes. The worst was below her ribs, a curving swath turned smooth and broad like the scar on her own belly. Her fingers traced it, and Billie told her she couldn’t feel anything along that shallow trough.

“We almost didn’t make it. Either of us. Both of us. But now we’re here… together.”

Billie hugged her crushingly tight. Restraint snapped, shattered, vanished. Her kiss almost tore at Reese’s mouth, and Reese kissed back, open-mouthed and just as hungering. Life was too short. They both knew it.

They left the bathtub when the water started to cool. They stumbled for the bedroom half draped in towels, managing a few steps at a time before one would pull the other close, or trap the other against the wall to pelt her with kisses. 

They found the bed more with their legs than with their eyes. They fell in a tangle onto it with a few small, breathless laughs of apology. Reese propped herself over Billie, poised on hands and knees, the woman beneath her almost a black silhouette against white covers, the contours of her body softened by the darkness of the room. Her skin had an almost bluish sheen in the dim light that came in from the street. Reese ran her hand along Billie’s hip, her toned thigh, and that skin was almost satin smooth, an inviting softness over a body hard and strong as stone.

Billie’s cupped her hand at the back of Reese’s head, urging her down into another kiss, but it was Reese who broke that kiss after a long, breathless moment and began to drag her lips along the center of Billie’s chest.

She tipped her head to one side, closed her lips around Billie’s dark nipple and sucked softly. She heard Billie’s slow exhale, and turned it to a gasp with just the slightest scrape of her teeth. Best of all was the small, startled moan when Reese’s fingers traced over the crease of Billie’s thigh and came to rest on her mons.

Then those fingers ventured lower. They spread Billie open, brushed across her stiff clit and sought out her entrance, curling down into the wetness gathered there. Reese made an approving sound while Billie’s shoulders pressed down into the bed and she mouthed an unvoiced swear.

Reese crawled backward and settled on her stomach between Billie’s long legs. She teased Billie open again with the thumbs of both hands. She kissed her at the cleft of vulva. Kissed and sucked at the apex of her labia, drawing that stiff clit into her mouth and flicking her tongue against it.

Billie had her hand at the top of Reese’s head, fingers carding through her damp hair.

Billie was quiet; it was the tension in her body that spoke to Reese’s careful attention. Reese could feel the tendons of her inner thighs grow taut while her tongue traced slow circles over Billie’s clit. She could feel that tightness turn a subtle quiver when she teased back the hood. And when she sucked hard, Billie would lift her hips ever so slightly under Reese’s mouth.

Then, the hand in Reese’s hair was pressing down, and Billie’s hips moving in a slow roll under Reese’s mouth. And in a voice just like the pressure of her hand, both firm and tender: “Don’t stop.”

Reese didn’t, and Billie’s hips bucked under her. She came with a sharp moan, a heavy exhalation, a shudder in her midsection and a tremor in her legs. Reese’s careful tongue coaxed the last spasms from her. She raised her head only when Billie was collapsed, panting, spent.

Reese found her towel and wiped the wetness off her chin with a grin on her face. “Good?”

It took Billie a moment to find any words.

“I can’t believe it’s fucking true what they say about nurses.”


	14. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The nameless man has some apologies to deliver.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love is an open coal chute ...

Billie woke the next morning to grey light in the windows, a day that felt muted and soft from the moment she opened her eyes. She could hear Reese’s breathing from the pillow beside her and she rolled onto her side to look at her. Reese was turned away, her hair a soft and tousled mop of blonde, the covers only drawn up to the middle of her back.

It had been a while since Billie had had a ‘thing.’ Sex had become another kind of vagrancy, after Deirdre was gone. Brief encounters, one night stands, things never meant to last. She’d become an occasional third to a number of couples she’d been friends with over the years, and she’d found surprising comfort in those. They were warm things, more than what she was used to. She was treated like a guest; a dinner guest who stayed for breakfast. They traded pleasure, and it came with few demands. 

Then, as always, she’d move on.

This was a different thing. She had a feeling as she watched Reese roll onto her back and stretch, that there would be more days that started like this. More waking up in each other’s beds on lazy mornings.

This wasn’t a Deirdre thing. But Billie wasn’t the person she’d been, when she’d been with Deirdre more than half a lifetime ago. This was a Reese thing.

It was a thing that seemed to fit.

Reese smiled at her as she woke up. It meant something that in those first few moments of wakefulness, before there was even a thought in her head, seeing Billie there made her happy.

“Good morning,” Reese said, ending with a yawn.

Billie kissed her above the eyebrow. “Good morning, sunshine.” There was always going to be a little edge of irony when Billie said such things. It was sugar, and she wasn’t a sweet person. But like most of the best irony, the twist was that she meant it deeply.

Reese loved it, though. Her sleepy smile became a grin. “You have a good sleep?”

Billie nodded. It had been quiet and warm, dreamless. Dreams had plagued her in the days leading up to her journey into the Void. The Void touches the minds of the dreaming and the dying alike, he’d said. Maybe the Void itself was quieter, without her friend and his endless, silent scream clutched in its fist.

“What about you?”

Reese nodded, her face turned towards the ceiling. “It’s strange,” she mused. “Waking up in the morning and thinking, this is exactly where I want to be in the world. Or, maybe not _exactly_ , but I can see it there, right on the horizon.”

Billie couldn’t help but feel wistful. “Here I am, still trying to set my course. I just hope it doesn’t take me far from you.”

Reese sat up in bed. “Whatever happens, we’ll figure th--”

Billie jerked upright at the sound of an explosion from downstairs.

Reese looked at her with eyes wide. “It’s one of the traps. Somebody’s in the shop.”

Billie mouthed “Fuck!” and it became a race to get some clothes on, to strap on her arm. Reese tossed her a loaded pistol she’d apparently been stashing in a potted fern by the door.

Reese insisted on going with her down the stairs, both of them in half-buttoned shirts and last night’s underwear. Neither of them knew what they would find behind the steel door into the shop, and Billie pulled the latch with one hand while her knife shimmered into existence in the other.

The door swung open and Billie raised her blade... And on the other side of that door, her nameless friend was crouched sweeping broken glass into a dustpan, his clothes, his hands and face covered in black soot. He looked up at her with puffy, dark rings under his eyes, even more sleepless than usual.

Reese leaned around Billie to look past her as Billie let the sword vanish back into her arm. “ _Black?!_ What the _fuck_!” She rested a hand on Billie’s arm as she brushed past, surveying the damage to her shop. Fortunately, the bolt had gone where she’d aimed it. There were some broken bottles, some spilled moonshine, but no harm done to anything valuable.

Which included the man who’d clearly tripped the wire himself.

“You _idiot_ , you could have gotten yourself _killed_! Why are you-- how did you even get _in_ here?! It’s locked down tighter than a Rudshore banker’s wallet!”

She took the brush and dustpan from him and he allowed it. He looked dazed, Billie thought. That trap _had_ caught him unawares. How often did things happen that he didn’t predict, didn’t expect? He was still getting used to it, she imagined.

“I’m sorry,” he said plainly.

Reese stared at him.

“The hatch to your coal chute is off its hinges,” he added after a pause. “I’ll put it back.” Then his tired eyes flickered over them and he realized neither of them was fully dressed. He looked Billie in the eye, a slight tilt to his head. “Did you have a good evening?”

Billie gave him a flat look, but spoke with nothing harsher than dryness in her tone. “Get upstairs, you little shit. We can talk once I’ve had some fucking coffee.”

“I cannot _believe_ you, Black,” Reese sighed, and she led the way back up to her suite. Once there, she told Billie where to find the coffee pot and showed their nameless friend the way to the washroom. The water was boiling by the time he joined them at the kitchen table, his hands and face cleaned, his jacket hung by the door.

Billie sat across from him, folded her hands on the table in front of her. It still felt strange, the way her fingers interlaced, flesh with Void.

“Alright,” she said. “Who first?”

It was a mild surprise to her when he lowered his gaze, bowed his head slightly in deference. “I’ll listen,” he said.

“You’re getting worse. Every day, you’re getting worse. You keep pulling away into yourself. It’s been half of a week and you’ve barely spoken. You build up walls and you slap us down whenever we try to scale them. You said you didn’t want to be alone, but the way you’re acting? What _do_ you want?”

It made her hurt, the way being asked that seemed to confuse him. The way he looked down at his own hands as if he’d find the answer in the bandages on his fingers or the scrapes on his knuckles. A thousand different emotions chased each other across his features while his mouth sought for words.

“It’s difficult to know what my own desires are. I’m unused to thinking of them. I’ve been a prisoner. Now I have a bed to sleep in, and I feel as if I’m living rich just because I eat every day. But I still find that what I need most is you. Both of you. Your presence in my life, in the places where I live it.

“I’ve acted poorly. You’ve been generous with me but all I’ve done is… I’ve withdrawn, just like you say. And like so many, I’ve only seen my mistakes after carrying them too far. There is a part of me that finds it impossible to trust. I wish it would be silent.”

Reese set mugs of fresh, hot coffee in front of them, and she laid her hand on the nameless man’s shoulders as she leaned past him to place his cup. He didn’t draw away, exactly, but he turned to look up at her, bewilderment plain on his face.

“I _hurt_ you with my words. I saw it in your eyes, the moment they cut too deep, and I regretted it in that same instant.” The corner of his mouth twisted, bitterness outweighing any amusement he might have felt. “If it weren’t for how sharp and clear everything has been, I wouldn’t even be able to trust that this is real. I feel so _much,_ since I walked free of the Void. Life crashes down on me like a hailstorm. It rises up around my ankles like floodwater. I have centuries of regrets, but striking out at you is one of the sharpest.”

Reese took her seat. She raised a slim hand as if to wave away his concern. “Black, it’s over and done. I’m alright. I think I’m doing better than you are, right now.”

He seemed about to say something else, but he fell silent at that. After a moment of reflection, he nodded. Then he looked down into the cup of coffee she’d poured him and saw she’d poured it with cream. He had to fight to swallow the lump in his throat.

“You are both so unbearably kind.”

Billie made a small murmur to the affirmative. “Think you’ll stop fighting it anytime soon?”

That was the first time Billie heard him laugh. It was small and short and shy, and it started with almost a cough. It turned his eyes warm and clear again.


	15. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new neighbor moves into the second floor apartment. It's _not_ always good to see a familiar face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introducing yet another OC here. Also, lots of Spy Bullshit. Hope you enjoy passphrases.

For other people, eleven o’clock in the morning was a reasonable hour. Most of the decent folk of the Empire would be awake, dressed, and going about their business. But the nameless man was certain he wasn’t and never had been ‘decent folk.’ His roommate likely even less so, and it was by her that he set his own schedule, staying awake through most of the night and bedding down a little before dawn.

But now there were noises coming from the storey below. Loud ones, as ostensibly reasonable people moved boxes and furniture into the second floor apartment, which had been empty since the Abbey raid.

Billie had the loft bed, which gave her a little more distance from all the noise on the second floor. She was also a heavier sleeper than her nameless roommate, who eventually gave up the fight for another hour in bed and pulled on some clothing. He put the kettle on the stove, and soon he heard sounds from the loft as well. Billie came down the tight, spiral stairs looking a bit bleary-eyed for the early wake-up, but not entirely out of sorts. It was one of the rare nights she and Reese hadn’t bedded down together, at one apartment or the other.

He poured coffee for them both. He’d been learning things where he could, helping out with what had become their household. Billie had been teaching him to cook, but he still wasn’t very adept or confident at it.

He was better at fixing things. He’d fixed doorknobs, re-set some cabinet hinges, and replaced some faulty wiring in the walls. They’d have a working ceiling fan in the main room when summer came around again. Both their bedrooms now had incandescent lamps plugged into the building’s electrical system; they required no whale oil.

After he’d made his apologies, he’d done his best to explain his objections to that substance. They had been more understanding than he’d expected. He was aware that Imperial society treated critics of the whaling industry as eccentrics at best. When he’d added to that his personal abstinence from eating meat, he’d expected at least an eye-roll. 

Animals, slaughtered without care, sometimes even by the people who had raised them, the people they trusted. Everyone justifying their consumption by claiming these creatures were so much _less_ than they themselves were. Less intelligent, or less feeling, just somehow _worth_ less. It was uncomfortably familiar.

He didn’t begrudge others their choices, he’d said. Everyone eats to survive. But he had made _his_ choice, and it deserved respect as well.

There had been no eye-rolling, none of the predictable counter-arguments. Just a few questions about eggs, milk, and cheese, and a short tangent about recipes either of the women wanted to try.

He’d ended up with a faint blush on his face at how eager they both were to cook food for him. He’d made Billie promise to show him how to bake potatoes, at least. She’d raised him the promise that she’d show him to make baked beans with molasses. She’d taught that one to Emily once she’d seen that the Empress of the Isles had no idea how to use an oven.

When he joined Billie at the table and took a drink from his cup, he frowned. There was always something off about the coffee when he made it. Still, he’d grown to like the flavor, and even more, the morning ritual of sitting around the table with his friends, drinking to start the day. Listening to Billie and Reese talk, whether he had much to add or not. 

It made him think of Corvo. He’d glimpsed some of his more mundane days. Mornings at the breakfast table in the Empress’s chambers, sometimes just Corvo and Emily, other times also some of those closest to them; Wyman, Jameson, Alexi. He’d taken strong coffee, while Emily was partial to tea with too much sugar. He’d watched from the Void, so remote from the warmth the whole tableau spoke of in volumes. He’d never even dreamed he might join them one day. He’d never thought he might taste coffee from Corvo’s cup, or find out if he was more like Emily and take tea with sugar.

“Hey.” Billie’s voice intruded on his thoughts. He turned to see concern on her face and only then realized how he must have looked, with those thoughts drifting through his head. “You alright?”

“Fine,” he answered softly. “What day is it?”

“The fifth.” Billie thought for a moment. “That tailoring order should be here by the tenth or so. I’m going to need you to show me just what it is I’ll be trying to do at Stilton’s place.”

“Mmm.” He nodded, but his thoughts were elsewhere. “We can practice. If you see any more of the Hollows, note where they are. We’ll take a look at them together.”

“You can’t see them anymore, can you.”

He shook his head, rubbing at the week’s worth of beard on his jaw. “No. No longer.” His gaze had fallen back to the coffee in his cup. Today was one of the days he’d been waiting for. It was the earliest his letter could have reached Dunwall. Now, another two agonizing weeks waiting for a reply, assuming it had made it into Corvo’s hands at all.

“You’re a thousand miles away,” Billie said.

He looked up again as if he’d been caught at something, and again he tried to bring himself back to the moment.

Before she could question him, there was a knock at the door. He rose to answer it.

“Good morning, sir,” their visitor greeted him, equal parts warm and genteel. He smiled with fine, white teeth below a flawless moustache. “As your new neighbor I thought it behooved me to introduce myself. Valentino Bianchi, a pleasure to meet you once again.” He stuck out his hand to shake while he looked past the nameless man’s shoulder into the room.

Billie looked from Valentino to her nameless friend and rose from her chair. He knew her thoughts because he was having the same ones. They both recognized Valentino; he was the barista from the Blackfish cafe.

This wasn’t a coincidence, even as the moustached man smiled and insisted it was. “I remember you two from the shop the other week. Sorry to see things haven’t gone well for you, Mister…”

“Black,” the nameless man stated. There were still fading bruises visible on his face, under mussed hair that likely needed a trim. “This is no coincidence and we’re no fools. Come inside.”

He stepped aside to let Valentino hesitantly pass. He leaned through the door for a moment before he shut it. “Valentino Bianchi is an agent for the Crown,” he said as the lock slid shut.

Billie leaned against the kitchen counter with her arms crossed, both eyes fixed on their new neighbor. “You could’ve mentioned something about that,” she said to her nameless friend.

“Everyone has a right to their secrets,” he answered. “The Agency values Valentino for his loyalty and discretion, not for duplicity. He’s not an assassin. And last I was aware, the Empress isn’t interested in seeing you hanged, regardless of your history.”

Valentino regarded Mr. Black with growing incredulity. “Good sir, I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage. An _extraordinary_ disadvantage.”

The nameless man half-smiled at him, a restrained, sideways quirk of his lips. “I usually do,” he said.

“I _just_ fucking moved in here,” Billie muttered. “I don’t want to kill you, and I _really_ don’t want to have to pack up and leave. So, what do you want with me? Can you give me _any_ reassurance you’re not going to bring the Grand Guard down on my head?”

Valentino held out his arms in a helpless half-shrug. “Like your well-informed friend said, the Crown isn’t after your head. My orders are to _watch_ you. If they wanted you brought down, I’m not the one they would’ve sent.” He paused a moment, looking between the two, weighing something in his mind. “My orders are to see if you make contact with a former associate. Daud.”

The name still struck Billie in the heart like a hammer on a bronze bell. She looked away immediately, turned her back and paced toward the window. “Daud is dead.”

It was news to Valentino. “Then that’s what I’ll report. If we can confirm it, they’ll reassign me elsewhere.”

“But you’re still saying we should _trust you?”_ Billie’s cynicism was evident.

Her nameless friend circled the table to lay a hand on her shoulder. “Ten days,” he said. “Ten days since we saw Bianchi at the Blackfish. A telegraph can reach Cullero in a single day, but the messenger boat takes five days to cross to Dunwall. If he files a report, there are ten days between it and any action he can take.”

Billie shook her head. Her shoulders slumped slightly under her friend’s hand. “I guess that gives us time to pick up roots.”

The man gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. He looked at the walls around them, old brick and peeling paint, but solid and familiar. This had been _theirs_. Their refuge, a couple of street kids with a roof over their heads to call their own.

“No. We won’t leave. It won’t be necessary.” he said. Then he turned towards Bianchi again. “Do you have the time? I think my watch is fast.”

The barista’s face went deadpan. He pulled a pocketwatch from his vest. “A quarter to noon.”

“Interesting. Mine’s closer to one.” The nameless man looked Bianchi in the eyes as he completed the passphrase. He didn’t have a watch.

Bianchi looked incredulous all over again. “That’s _very…_ ” He stopped short and shook his head. “Who _are_ you?”

“I don’t outrank you,” he answered. “I’m not a member of the Agency. My connection to the Crown is more personal. I’ve sent a report of my own, one that explains a situation they have no way of knowing about. One you’ve just stumbled into. It should reach them soon, if it isn’t already in their hands. Until then, you can consider Billie Lurk to be the best friend the Crown doesn’t know they have.”

Bianchi was still shaking his head. At length, he took a deep breath and re-centered himself. “Alright. Alright, yes. Closer to _one_ , in the name of… You know too much to be lying. I’ll need confirmation from upstairs, you understand this?”

“I’d expect nothing less. Tell Corvo I said hello.”

Billie was staring with nearly as much incredulity as Bianchi. “Black. I appreciate what you’re trying to do but… I don’t know know why you think anything I’ve done is going to change their minds about me. We’re just delaying the inevitable, if you try to bluff here.”

“You gave my life back to me.” The nameless man realized, then, the bit of context Billie was missing. The bit of truth he’d held back because he carried it too close to his heart. He looked down, paced back to the table and took a seat once more beside his cooling cup of coffee.

“That day you came to meet me on Shindaerey peak, I had just spoken to Corvo for what I believed would be the last time. And now, after some of the longest days I have ever known, I’m left wondering if he knows yet that I’m alive, or if he’s still there in Dunwall with my last farewell ringing in his ears.” He drew a slow breath. Speaking about it hurt as much as he’d thought it would. It made all the nebulous anguish of these days spent waiting coalesce into something sharp and terrible. There was no chance to keep it from his face, so he tried to look away. “Corvo Attano is my lover.”

With his face turned towards the wall, he couldn’t see Billie’s jaw nearly drop. “What.”

“I wrote him as many of the hidden truths as I could explain. I told him what you’d done for me, what you saved me from. And then I pleaded your case, because I knew you wouldn’t. I don’t know if he’ll be swayed, but … there is a chance. He’s surprised me many times before.”

When he finally turned back to the others in the room, they were both staring at him. Bianchi was watching Billie’s reaction as much as the nameless man’s face.

“You never said anything about …! This isn’t something you can meddle in. He _hates_ me. You know he has every reason to fucking hate me. I can’t … What I did was unforgivable!” The nameless man could see the shadow passing over Billie’s face, guilt and fear running at its forward edge like harbingers. Her past was catching up with her again. “There are some things that just can’t be forgiven.”

He saw her raise her arm and he knew what it meant. He felt the Void like electricity in the air, raising the hairs on his arms, on the back of his neck. He lunged for her so fast he kicked the chair out from under himself. “No!”

He caught her and she caught him. He knew he’d never be sure if it was because she’d decided to let him. 

“The cycles of people’s lives repeat themselves. Think of where running has brought you. Every time you’ve run, you’ve found yourself back where you began. How much more of your life do you want to spend starting over? You have a choice. You have a _home_ here. You have a foundation.”

“Black,” she said, her voice low and hoarse. “I can’t stay. I can’t face this. I can’t face _him_.”

“I know I am asking another impossible thing from you. But stand, here, now, and you will not stand alone.”

She looked into his eyes while he righted himself. He kept her wrist in a white-knuckled grip as relentless as the moment he’d given her that arm, and he wondered what she saw in his eyes in that moment. He’d wondered the same every time he’d spoken with her while she’d made her way to his prison to judge him. 

She placed her flesh and blood hand over his, not to pull it away, but to close around it.

“Alright.” she sighed. “If you’re absolutely convinced I’ve got another impossible feat locked up in here.”

“I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The checking-your-watch exchange provides an operative with the opportunity to disclose which major Agency spy he's working for. "One" being the Royal Spymaster, Corvo Attano.


	16. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The age closes around us all like rows of black teeth, but like the white wings of a gull a new one opens in its wake."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter introduces Wyman (Rourke) and Jameson Curnow. For purposes of my own work, Wyman is ftm and referred to with he/him pronouns. And Jameson leans kind of heavily on my partner's portrayal of him in the lengthy [corvosider RP-fic](http://theshipwrites.tumblr.com/tagged/courtsider) we've done / will hopefully return to.

It was too late in the year for breakfast on the terrace. The skies over Dunwall were constantly leaden grey and often raining. Corvo had discovered that as the weather turned bleak, his mood turned grim along with it. Even after all these years, he was Serkonan.

Breakfast was indoors in Emily’s study, these days. Coffee on the table, tea tray on Emily’s desk, and some offerings of food set beside either; crumpets, toast, rosewater jelly, some salted eel and pickled fish eyes. Wyman Rourke joined them, as was usual whenever he was in Dunwall. Without any sun to brighten Corvo’s morning, Wyman and Emily would do the job adequately, he’d found.

With the Empress and her best beloved snugly side by side on the sofa, Corvo turned the desk chair to face them and sat down. Wyman started pouring a cup of coffee for him before he’d even had a chance to reach for the pot. 

“How does the morning find you, my Lord Attano? I’m sure it’s grateful that it managed to spot you at all.” There was always a sort of drollness in Wyman’s tone, as though he had to be absolutely certain everything out of his mouth was wrapped in a gauzy layer of irony. It was something Corvo had found off-putting until he’d come to know the young man behind the witty tongue.

Emily, on the other hand, found him simultaneously scintillating and irritating. “In a good way,” she’d insisted. He could identify with that, from his own experience.

“It’s lucky I wasn’t trying,” Corvo rumbled as he took his coffee. 

Wyman grinned at him and settled back with one arm around Emily, a cup of hot tea in the opposite hand. Emily was leaning against Wyman’s side while her attention was fiercely focused on a copy of the Karnaca Gazette.

“The Michaels Bank is collapsing.” Emily, in contrast to Wyman, was subdued and deadly serious. “There are families in Karnaca losing _everything_ , and mounting evidence the bank was defrauding a lot of those people to begin with. As if the Abbey raid on the Battista District wasn’t bad enough.”

“Think your Duke has a handle on it?” Corvo was aware of the unconventional way Emily had deposed the actual Duke Luca Abele. 

Emily folded the paper and sipped her tea. “I don’t think he’d turn down some help. We need to give these people some kind of relief before we have a riot on our hands.”

“There are emergency reserves in the treasury,” Corvo said, “but parliament might not want any of that sent away from Gristol while we’re still rebuilding from the Coup.”

Wyman handed Emily a toasted crumpet with rosewater jelly. “Send out a call for charitable giving,” he said. “What’s being wealthy without occasion to flaunt it?”

“You really think people losing their homes in Karnaca are going to be consoled by a charity ball in Dunwall?”

“Not a ball, certainly. I was thinking, maybe, hmm. Solicit some donations from all the prominent painters and silvergraphers of Serkonos. Make it an auction. Celebrate the Jewel of the South in all its richness, not its hard times.”

“Huh.” Emily liked that idea, Corvo could tell. “We can look for pieces depicting the working class. The miners and tradesmen. Maybe even make the donors _feel_ something for the people in Karnaca who need us right now.”

“Psh, you cannot squeeze whale oil from a dry bone,” Wyman said, his tone dryer than a desert. “But you can certainly impress upon them that they should _appear_ to care.”

A knock at the door announced Jameson Curnow, who entered with a thick, yellow envelope in one hand. He was dressed in sober, well-tailored clothes, his jacket open to show the waistcoat underneath and the platinum watch fob Corvo had given him some years ago. He crossed the room to join them with a polite smile and a nod.

“I only need a moment, Lord Protector.” The instant Jameson passed off the envelope to Corvo, Wyman was pressing a small piece of toast into his hand, which Jameson received impassively.

“There are some reports in from Karnaca waiting at your desk,” Jameson said before he ate the toast. His face was as sober as the rest of him, yet without seeming stoney. He kept an openness about him which, Corvo had realized, made him a formidable spy. It was easier to trust someone who seemed to have no secrets. “But also, that invitation from Lady Withers? The one in the blue envelope? I wouldn’t have bothered you but her courier is waiting on a reply.”

Corvo grimaced. “Turn her down politely. Make an excuse about the state of affairs in Karnaca.”

Wyman had been tearing off pieces of toast and handing them to Jameson the entire time they conversed. Jameson simply took each one and ate it, even as they kept coming faster and faster, until finally he ended up trying to answer Corvo with his mouth full of bread.

Wyman guffawed when Jameson’s game face finally slipped and he had to clear his throat with a chug from a carafe of cold water.

“That’s one for me, Curnow!”

“What game are you keeping score on, Rourke?”

“The one I’m winning.”

Jameson sighed. “Some of us have _work_ to do.”

“I pity such men.”

“They are no doubt well aware.”

When Jameson turned to leave, Wyman rose from the couch and hurried after him with a cup of tea, dusting Jameson off with his silk pocket square. Corvo could see the exchange of grins between the two, Wyman’s wide and bright, Jameson’s more subdued and accompanied by a small eye-roll.

Emily, meanwhile, had her eyes on the envelope in Corvo’s hands. “So. What’s that?”

Corvo ripped open the top of it carefully, calmly. “Mail.”

“Right. I know an excuse when I hear one.”

“He just passed it along because he was stopping by. It’s a reasonable thing to do.” Corvo had had long years of practice at keeping his thoughts to himself. He knew how much that had frustrated Emily during her teens. She’d spent most of her adult life learning to read him, though.

“I thought we were past this. Father?”

Corvo let the mask slip. He looked at his daughter with fondness in his eyes. Fondness and mischief. “What kind of father would I be if I didn’t make you work for this?”

The front of the envelope was marked with a spot of blue ink, next to the return address. The name of the sender written there was itself a pass-phrase. It meant this was for his eyes alone. And the blue, which Jameson had also made sure to allude to, indicated serious urgency.

He’d only received one other communique like this. It had alerted him to a Regenter plot on Emily’s life.

He slid the letter out of the envelope, and what he saw at the top of the first page shattered any chance of keeping his cool. He put down his coffee and nearly bolted from his chair, leaving Emily and Wyman staring after him.

“This needs me. Now.”

Neither of them tried to stop him.

He looked again at the letter in his hands as he rushed towards his own rooms.

The age closes around us all like rows of black teeth,  
But like the white wings of a gull a new one opens in its wake.  
Corvo, I am alive. 

A familiar symbol was drawn there, and everything below it was written in cipher. He locked the doors to his chambers the moment they shut behind him. The key to the letter’s encryption was locked away, not only in his safe, but in a secret compartment in the safe’s heavy door. Those few who knew about it refered to it only as “the Blue Book.” 

The Agency issued a new one periodically to the ranking agent of each of the Isles and any other operatives involved in anything deemed crucial. Any message encrypted with the Blue Book could only be decrypted by someone with access to another Blue Book. It was two-hundred pages of what was called, by the natural philosopher and mathematician who created them, a one-time pad.

If this letter truly came from who it claimed to, Corvo could believe that somehow, he could manage this.

Decryption was arduous, but Corvo had never been as immersed in the task as he was then.

> To understand what has happened, you must understand the truth of what I’ve been. You have seen me through dark waters. Legends and lies have enshrouded me like fog and shadow. Yet as we circled each other, you glimpsed me in the briefest of moments. When you thought of me not as a god, but as a man, those are the moments you knew me best. When you loved me as a man, you loved me as no other ever has.

He went on to describe his childhood, the cult that plucked him from the streets. The bloody sacrifice that made him the Outsider. Corvo hung on every word, teeth clenched, body shaking with fury. 

The letter went on, describing his existence in the Void, the terror and agony of it, the utter desolation. His first few centuries as the Outsider, trying to call for help, trying to be understood, scrabbling at the walls of his prison. The way he’d slowly given up. The way he had never imagined that what had finally come to pass could ever happen. 

Corvo felt his absence so keenly, while he read. He remembered the last of the dreams, the unexpected sadness of the lover in his arms. Worse, the sense that the sorrow he’d seen was just the smallest part of some ancient, buried pain. He wanted to enfold him in his arms, tell him over and over that it was done, that he wasn’t alone anymore.

Then the letter told him another story. The story of a woman named Billie Lurk.

He knew that name. As he’d moved through the Flooded District stalking Daud, he’d learned she had been there when the Whalers came for Jessamine. He’d learned enough to be certain she was the one who’d held him tethered and helpless while Daud ran Jessamine through with his bloody knife.

She had come to his attention more recently as well. Reports had come in from Karnaca that she was at large once again and searching for Daud.

The story ran deeper than that, whether he wished to see the whole of it or not.

The story told of a chance encounter with the sons of Theodanis Abele that ended with blood in the streets. Lurk had been a street child with nowhere to turn to, a thief, an accidental murderer unable to outrun the bounty on her head. Taken in by Daud, she became his protege, his second, the most promising of the Whalers.

Then the story told of Lurk’s betrayal, and how her life was spared by a man who rarely showed mercy. The story veered aside and told of Daud’s hunt for a witch named Delilah.

Daud had gone to incredible lengths to save Emily, and Corvo himself had never even known she’d been in danger. He’d known of the Brigmore coven, but only after it had been defunct, and the name Delilah had had no significance to him then. But now, to know he owed Emily’s life to the man who had murdered her mother? It stuck in his craw.

Emily had told him of things she’d learned during the coup. She’d found an audiograph from Brianna Ashworth that mentioned Daud; the man had clashed with Delilah in the past, and the former Outsider’s story only confirmed it.

Emily had talked with him about the Outsider as well. “He’s not what the Abbey says he is, is he?” she’d asked.

“No. I’m not sure what his game is but it’s nothing that cut and dried,” he’d answered. “During the plague, he gave me his Mark and he spoke as if he was letting a hound off its chain. I refused to play his game, I wouldn’t kill for his amusement. But when I showed mercy… he _praised_ me. I think he knew what I was trying to do. Trying to put the world back together, brick by brick, the way Jessamine begged me to. 

“When it was all over he whispered to me in my dreams. He told me I’d built a future for us both, that you’d have a long and prosperous reign. That when my time came I’d be laid to rest side by side with your mother. He told me I had made the world better.”

Emily had told him about the sacrifice, then. The Outsider’s story of how he’d been made, the almost conversational way he’d related it while the horror of it had gripped her. To him it was just a fact of his life, nothing more. It reminded him of the way Jameson talked about his parents dying in the Plague and finding rats stripping their bones. 

It was another of those ‘tells’ he’d collected. Pieces of the puzzle the Outsider presented, only now fitting together, an explanation of the man who’d come to him for comfort on the eve of what he’d believed would be his death.

The letter went on to expose something else he hadn’t known. Something Emily had kept from him. The ship’s captain who had helped her so much during the coup, the one he’d said he would welcome to Dunwall Tower just to shake her hand. The one Emily called Meagan Foster.

She was Billie Lurk. Emily had known it, by the end.

Hatred was a simple thing. Fury was without nuance, just bitter bile at the back of his throat, bristling heat on his neck. But every word he read picked away at it, unraveled the whole snarled skein into a treacherous pile of questions, regrets, and raw anguish.

Had Emily hidden the truth because she wanted to protect Lurk from him, even knowing what she had done? Perhaps. Probably so. Weeks spent as allies, even friends, would make Emily’s hate as much an indecipherable wreckage as Corvo’s own was becoming. And she was so much gentler than he was, so much better at seeing the best in people.

Then, the final chapters of the once-Outsider’s story. His lover owed his life to Billie Lurk and to Daud. Billie had fought her way past the cult that guarded his prison. She had found the secret of his lost name, against all odds. And she had convinced Daud’s bitter, malingering spirit to speak that name, return it to him, and set him free.

> I will come to you in Dunwall when I can. The days feel long already, filled with thoughts of you. Billie is keeping by my side for now, not only an unasked-for champion but an unexpected friend. I am a stranger to the world in many ways, and the richness of life overwhelms me. It is so dazzlingly bright, the sun on Karnaca bay. I think of your voice, I think of touching your hand, not in a dream but in the flesh. I will give my name to you, first and most of all, keeping to the promise I gave you when last you held me. I want to hear it from your lips for the first time.

Then, the letter was finished and Corvo sat hunched over his desk, weighing a fresh and untested love against an old, well-worn hate. He looked again at the opening words, written in such a graceful hand, and ran his thumb across the letters.


	17. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wyman Rourke owns the fastest ship in the Empire. Corvo Attano has unwelcome plans for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Between taking Wyman's hot rod of a yacht and using the Cullero Gap, Corvo can reach Karnaca in less than half the time of a normal voyage. But mainly this chapter exists because I like writing Wyman and giving Jameson a very hard time, all the time.

Wyman Rourke was the most notable dandy in the whole Empire, a title he wore with pride and fiercely defended from all comers. He was devastatingly handsome, even in the estimation of people besides himself and the Empress who loved him; his face was fine-featured and somewhat vulpine, with pale grey eyes ringed with long, dark lashes. His chin-length hair was strawberry blonde and loosely curly. And everything he wore was at the razor’s edge of fashion simply because he was the one wearing it.

The Rourke family had a hereditary fortune, one they’d protected during the Morley Insurrection by siding with Gristol and bunkering down in Dunwall as political refugees. Afterwards, they had been able to take control of most of Morley’s textile mills, and their fortune had only grown. Wyman was proud to showcase all their finest fabrics on his own person.

He was a constant patron of the Draper’s Ward, not only to re-stock his ever-changing wardrobe, but to speak to the couturiers there, to show them samples of everything his family’s mills were making, to tell them the capabilities of their new looms that could produce patterned and brocaded fabric in a fraction of the time of traditional weavers. It wasn’t enough to simply have the lion’s share of the textile market; Rourke textiles had to be in demand. They had to be prestigious.

He made himself a willing spectacle. Eager, even. When black was considered sophisticated, he shunned it for intense colors. When tight breeches were all the rage, he wore wide-legged trousers. If the court favored plain wool tailcoats, he wore cropped jackets with a floral print. Yet from a combination of remarkable taste and confidence, he made it all seem flawlessly beyond reproach.

That is how he knew, as he sprinted through the main hall of Dunwall Tower, that he could run, but he couldn’t hide.

It wasn’t him they were after, exactly. It was his yacht, the Kestrel. But in order for the Empire to requisition it, he had to be presented with the requisition papers. It didn’t matter if he signed them or not, but someone with the appropriate authority had to verify that he had at least seen them and been informed. Since the requisition wasn’t contestable it was nothing but a formality, but it was one they’d decided to grant him. ‘They’ in this case referring to the Imperial Spy Agency. Notably, Corvo Attano and his assistant Jameson Curnow.

“Wyman is family. He deserves that much,” he’d heard Corvo say before he’d bolted. “That much” being, apparently, a fighting chance.

Corvo had come to Emily the first thing that morning, after being closeted in his own chambers for the entire previous day. He had all the signs of someone who hadn’t slept the previous night, even dressed in the clothes he’d had on at yesterday’s breakfast, and Wyman had known immediately that Emily was concerned, and something was very off.

Corvo had said he’d received word of something in Karnaca that required his immediate and personal attention. He told Emily that he wanted her to send the Jessamine to Karnaca with a diplomatic envoy; that he would have Jameson announce he was leading the mission himself.

But he wasn’t going on the Jessamine. She was the Imperial Navy’s largest ship and she would take over two weeks to make that voyage. “I need to be there as of Rain 21,” he’d said. “Failing that, sooner is still better. I’m taking the Kestrel.”

The Kestrel was Wyman’s most prized possession. His frequent trips between Dunwall and Caulkenny had made it practical to have a small ship to call his own, and a pilot in his employ. The Kestrel was more than just a yacht, though. It was designed and built to his specifications by the finest shipwrights in Gristol. To his knowledge or to anyone’s, the Kestrel was the fastest ship in the Empire.

So Wyman had nearly dropped his crumpet at the proposition of lending it to anyone, even his almost-Father-in-Law. “My dear Lord Protector,” he’d said. “The Kestrel would still only shave a handful of days off the voyage. Surely not enough to make any significant difference?”

Then Corvo had stated his intention to take the Kestrel through the Cullero Gap: a passage so narrow and treacherous that no trade routes made use of it, and no insurer would cover ships or shipments that attempted it. There were rocky shoals, there were colonies of an oceanic species of dangerous Krust, there was even rumored to be a monstrous sea serpent. And, if one believed in such things, the gap was haunted by the ghosts of the many sailors who had died there.

Wyman had adamantly refused. In the ensuing argument, Emily had tried to mediate, but ended up taking her father’s side, which added to the indignity of it all. If Corvo said it was this important, it probably was, she’d pleaded. Yet when asked if this was a matter of life and death, Corvo had answered a vague “Maybe” and looked away.

As Wyman had been about to storm out of the room, Jameson Curnow had entered with papers in his hand. “Requisition papers for the pleasure vessel ‘Kestrel’...” Jameson had had his eyes on Wyman even as he’d passed the papers to Corvo. In that one moment, as their eyes met, each had seen the same understanding dawn between them.

So this is how it’s going to be. Wyman had seen the same thought run through Jameson’s head. And then, before Emily would have a chance to stamp the papers, he’d bolted through the door.

They could take his darling Kestrel, but by the Void, he’d make them work for it.

The gardens were turning grey and bare as the year grew late. The lush lawns were muddy, the trees and bushes dropping their leaves. Wyman ran past the pond where he and Emily used to catch frogs together as children. He passed the gazebo that marked a strange vacancy in his world. For all the time he spent out here with Emily, she didn’t walk this way, tried not to even look at this place. His heart hurt with the knowledge of why.

A bridge crossed to the waterlock, the only way to approach the Tower by boat. He stopped at its threshold to look back over his shoulder, and he could see Jameson in his navy blue suit sprinting after him, holding his spectacles in place with one hand and his bloody papers in the other.

Wyman shoved his way through the steel door into the waterlock building, looking immediately for a way onto the metal catwalks that crisscrossed the vaulted chamber. He clambered up a ladder and began furiously turning a hand-crank to raise it after him. When Jameson came skidding to a halt below him, he wondered if that had been a wasted venture; when Jameson jumped and managed to grab the bottom rung, he realized it certainly had. Releasing the crank sent the ladder rolling back to its full extension, and Jameson tumbling to the floor with it.

“Rourke, that’s ungentlemanly!”

“I’m not feeling gently disposed at the moment, Curnow!”

Wyman crossed that first catwalk and climbed a set of stairs to another, while Jameson climbed the ladder and rushed after him. Wyman had begun to realize he was cornered, up a tree like a stray cat. He started to climb over the iron rails, hoping to find footing on one of the girders that spanned the chamber.

“Rourke!” Jameson was watching as Wyman seemed about to test his treacherous footing on a steel beam barely wider than his own foot.

“This is what it’s come to, Curnow! _He’s_ done this! He’s pitted us against each other and you know it! He set everything up to send us on a merry chase for his own amusement!”

“Of course, Wyman, but be serious for a moment, you can’t--”

“Oh, but I _shall_! Just watch me!” 

“But, really. In _those_ shoes?”

Wyman hugged the vertical beam he’d been hanging onto and began to snicker uncontrollably. By the time he raised his head, Jameson was beside him, hauling him back over the rail.

“Very well, Curnow, one for you.” He could accept defeat, under these conditions. It had been inevitable in the first place.

Jameson sighed and presented Wyman with the requisition papers once he was on solid footing again. “Please, Wyman, for the sake of my sanity tell me you were just waiting for me to call your bluff? If you’d gone out there and fallen…”

“I’d be a dead man with an intact yacht.”

“We’d _both_ be dead men, and they’d burn our bodies on the bloody Kestrel, Wyman.”

“You’re always so grim, Jameson. But I know it means you _care_.”

“I’m glad one of us does!”

Jameson shoved Wyman away. One by one they descended the ladder to the waterlock’s main floor. 

“I could tell Emily,” Jameson said. “I _should_ tell Emily.”

“Tell her father to bring back my boat in as few pieces as possible, while you’re at it.”

“Tell him yourself, but tell him soon. He’s leaving today.” Jameson paused, touched Wyman’s elbow to beckon him to do the same. “Would it make any difference if I told you it might be life or death? The reason he has to take your ship?”

Wyman sighed deeply, an irritated pout on his face. “I suppose it would be. I suppose this all makes me seem so unfathomably petty. Lord Attano is being… intense, even by his own personal record-setting standards of such.”

“He hasn’t told me anything. Only to tell the papers that he’s going to Karnaca on the Jessamine. I don’t know what this is about,” Jameson said. He leaned against the footbridge’s stone balustrade.

“Even if you did I’m sure you couldn’t tell me.”

“Likely not, but I promise I’d feel conflicted about it.” Jameson gave Wyman a small smile.

“Curnow, may I learn to be as gracious in defeat as you are in victory.”


	18. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The Void will swallow the last stars in the sky before I am ready to let anyone hold a blade to my throat again." 
> 
> Nonetheless, it's past time for a shave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ccdQe1FNWc>
> 
>  
> 
> At some point I realized a couple of things. Mr. Black needs at least one male friend, and that _this_ was going to cause him some significant issues, in a world without safety razors.
> 
> Valentino is a Fine Sir. He's had various jobs but all of them are basically to pay the bills while he pursues music in his off time. Not a fan of Shan Yun. He'd probably really like the Decemberists.
> 
> I have got a considerable buffer right now. I am going to try and post multiple updates a week as MY CRINGUS GIFT TO YOU. The chapter you've been waiting for is on the way. MERR CRINGUS.

Bianchi at least appeared to be good on his word. The next couple days were calm and quiet, and Valentino was a pleasant neighbor. Every day, there was music from the second floor. Often audiographs, but just as often, the sound of a violin or a serkonan guitar, and of Valentino singing. The man sang to himself constantly, and there were times, as he learned the melodies, the nameless man found himself humming along as he did chores.

He did as many chores as he could find to do. If he finished those he would try to find ways to invent more. He remembered Billie staring at him thoughtfully, lighting a pipe while he washed dishes after supper and seemed deeply immersed in the task.

“The Outsider,” she’d mused, “washing dishes.”

“I’m not the Outsider,” he’d replied, his tone mild. “And yes, I’m washing dishes.” He’d worked on carefully towel-drying the bowl in his hands before he placed it back in the cabinet where it belonged.

“You’ve done them every night this week.”

“I’ve never known them to wash themselves.”

Billie had snickered at that. “But… you _like_ it. I come back after a night out taking jobs from Reese and you’ve cleaned the place like it’s the Grand Palace ballroom. You don’t need to scrub the floors more than once every few weeks, you know.”

“I know.” He’d paused in thought. “It’s drudgery to most. Menial, laborious, scorned by anyone with enough wealth to hire a servant. You’ve seen how many of those people with so much power never stop looking for more. You saw them in the quarry, the cult surrounding me so different from the Eyeless gang in the Albarca baths. Just another case of the rich shuffling their dirty jobs onto the deprived. The cult courted the upper tiers of society, the wealthy and powerful, and they believed themselves transcendent. They came to the Void seeking to leave their humanity behind them.

“Everything I wanted, everything I was denied, was everything they scorned. They would trade pulse and breath for the bloodless cold of the Void. Pain and joy, love and hate alike were crimes to them, flaws to be cut away. They recoiled from _life_. They reviled it.”

He’d begun to carefully wipe a whiskey glass. “So I do the dishes, and I wash our clothes and scrub our floors, because these are mundane things, done by everyday people. I work and I feel like I’m living.”

He hadn’t understood why Billie had taken the glass from him then and given him a rib-cracking hug, but he had appreciated it all the same.

That day, the nameless man left the apartment door open to let Valentino’s music drift up the stairs while he filled a washtub and gathered laundry. Minutes later he raised his head at a knock on the doorframe to see Valentino standing at the open door, a curious look on his face and a measuring cup in his hand.

“I say this fully aware of the cliche’, but I find myself short a cup of sugar.” Bianchi narrowed his eyes, then. “Mr. Black, I know this situation is awkward at best, but if anything you’ve said is true, then I am at your service.”

The nameless man wasn’t sure what Bianchi was getting at. He did fetch the sack of sugar from the pantry, though, and he held it open while Bianchi scooped out a level cup of it. The smells of cooking that regularly came from the second floor were usually as enticing as the music.

“I’ve been a bit of an intruder in your home,” Bianchi continued, contrite. “Would you do me the honor of being a guest in mine? Come and join me for some coffee. I’d appreciate the company.”

The nameless man accepted the invitation with a thoughtful incline of his head. 

The second floor apartment was larger than the loft he shared with Billie, and a fair portion of it was devoted to a well-equipped kitchen. Valentino had a pair of tart crusts sitting on the counter, and a number of figs on the cutting board. He put a kettle on the stove when they walked in, and made a quick inquiry about the music while he turned down the volume on the audiograph player.

The nameless man had shrugged. “I’ve enjoyed everything you’ve played.” Valentino’s selections tended more towards the songs of the street musicians; fiddles and guitars, tambourines and castanets. Songs with rhythm, sung in clear voices.

Valentino was clearly delighted to hear that. “I’ve got something coming in soon, work-songs from Wynnedown. They have some of the best fiddle-players in Morley.” Sitting near the audiograph player, the nameless man could see Valentino’s fiddle and a serkonan guitar beautifully inlaid with River Krust shell.

“You live beside your love,” The nameless man mused. “Music.”

“She does keep my heart ever full, does she not.” Valentino was whisking some of the sugar into a bowl of eggs and cream. He tossed the cut figs with few more spoonfuls. “Started these tarts without realising I was out of sugar. Thought this would be a good way to use these figs before they went too soft.”

The nameless man watched him work. He seemed to have two or three things in progress at a time, and he moved effortlessly between them. He poured the water for the coffee just before it reached a boil, then went back to pour the custard into his tart shells, already arrayed with the cut figs. He checked his oven and placed the tarts inside, and by then, the coffee was ready to pour.

“Now… pardon me for being so blunt, but is there a reason you look like you haven’t shaved in more than week?”

He didn’t want to confess he’d been deliberately putting it off. Valentino noticed his sheepish look, his eyes turning away evasively, and he frowned with an inward dissatisfaction.

“Shaming you wasn’t my intention. I’m sorry.”

The nameless man took a deep breath and shook his head. If he was ever going to learn, this was the best opportunity he’d had. “I don’t know how,” he said.

There was no judgment in Valentino’s eyes. “I could help? There was a time in my life I worked as a barber.”

“The Void will swallow the last stars in the sky before I am ready to let anyone hold a blade to my throat again.” 

Valentino nearly flinched from the sudden intensity, and the nameless man looked contrite. 

“It’s nothing against you. It’s…”

“Say no more,” Valentino said, an unexpected understanding in his voice. “What if I show you how to do it yourself?”

“That would be better.”

Valentino brightened at that. “Alright, my friend. Let’s see…” He took the kettle from the stove and led the way back to the washroom. The nameless man followed, hands clasped behind his back, trying to keep his own nervousness from showing.

Valentino turned the faucet on hot. He placed a couple of smaller towels in the sink basin and poured the still steaming water from the kettle over them, letting hot water from the tap do the rest of the job. He wrung out the towels as the mirror fogged over and the room filled with warm vapor, and he showed the nameless man how to wrap the lower part of his face.

The towel was deliciously warm. He clutched gladly at the sensation, settling himself while Valentino opened a tin of shaving foam and used a soft, wet brush to work it to a lather. 

Valentino wiped the mirror with his towel first, then started brushing the shaving foam onto his face. “Just brush it on like so. Not too thick. Since I’m leaving my moustache well alone, I don’t use any there.” He passed the brush to the nameless man when he’d finished with it, and let him stand in front of the mirror.

He hadn’t spent much time in front of mirrors. The face that looked back at him was strange in a way. The world, mankind, had been his imperfect mirror for so long. He knew he would never see himself reflected back from the eyes of the people he spoke to. They saw legends and hearsay and their own expectations. None of them had seen him as he was. Corvo had spied some brief glimpses, one of the very few who had ever tried to look deeper. Then, at last, came Billie.

Now he saw his own face and he both knew it and didn’t, somehow. The cultists, the witches, had called him handsome. Even beautiful. Seductive, according to the accounts of the Abbey, though he had never tried to seduce anyone. Even with Corvo it had been an awkward flirtation at best, followed by a blunt proposition. 

Did the cult choose him for this face? Hundreds of boys could’ve fit their obscure set of omens and portents. 

He saw his eyes, deep green now. He saw his own troubled expression looking back at him. And he tilted back his head, brushing lather under his chin, onto his neck.

Valentino had a fine razor, set in a handle of whale ivory. He folded it open and showed the other man how to hold it. Then he set to work on his own barely-present beard. “You reach over like this, to hold the skin taut. Then you take the blade at an angle like so, and you scrape downwards. Don’t press, just scrape. Take your time. Once you’ve gone a bit, you rinse the blade under the tap and pick up where you left off.”

Valentino was careful and precise, but the process didn’t take long. Soon enough, the nameless man was in front of the mirror again with the razor in his hand.

It wasn’t so bad at first. He started at the lower edge of his sideburn and worked his way along his cheek. Then he tilted his head, drew taut the skin of his neck with his left hand and placed the razor below the corner of his jaw.

A tiny line of blood appeared at the razor’s edge. His hand was shaking and he couldn’t tame it. His heart was pounding as if he’d been in a sprint. He dropped the razor into the sink basin and stumbled back against the wall behind him, fighting to catch his breath.

Valentino said nothing. He left the room, but returned a moment later with about two fingers of brandy in a glass. “Toss it back,” he said. “Give it a moment.”

He did. It took a few minutes but the panic passed. The brandy had burned on its way down, but once in his stomach it settled as a diffuse, pervasive warmth. It softened everything. Even though he felt his pulse speed up again when he picked the razor up, it wasn’t as bad as before. He managed to steady his hand.

Each stroke with the blade was easier than the one before it, but it was still a relief to be done. He rinsed his face, blotted it dry with a fresh towel.

Valentino grinned his approval. “How does it feel?”

“Better. It was starting to itch.”

“I could give your hair a trim. You’re a little long in the fringe.”

The nameless man watched in the mirror while he pushed his hair out of his eyes. “If it’s no trouble…”

“None at all, my friend.” Their cooling coffee was still waiting as they returned to the front room. Valentino pulled out a chair from the kitchen table, and draped the other man in a clean towel as he sat down. 

The nameless man sipped from his cup while Valentino fetched his clippers. “How is it so much better when you make it?”

“Coffee? I _am_ a professional.” Before he started on the nameless man’s hair, Valentino pulled his tarts from the oven, setting them on wire racks to cool.

They smelled divine.

The haircut was relaxing. He hadn’t expected it to be. Where he’d found a refuge in keeping busy, this was the opposite. He sat still, patient and compliant while Valentino worked, just listening to the music from the audiograph and enjoying the feeling of the comb across his scalp.

“And there he is,” Valentino said at last as he pulled the towel from the other man’s shoulders and dusted off any stray clippings. “The secret member of the Royal family himself, the enigmatic Mister Black.”

He felt a flush of heat across his cheekbones.

“Pardon,” Valentino said. “There is a sort of romance to the story. At least to the small parts I’m privy to.”

“You believe it, then?”

“I believe … there has to be _some_ truth to it. I believe Ms. Lurk believes you, and she hardly seems a credulous fool to any degree. As for you… there’s a longing that never leaves your face. It’s the look of a man in love. No musician could ever mistake it.”

The flush on his cheeks felt like it would never subside. Sometimes it wasn’t entirely a relief, for people to see through to the truth of him. He wondered if he’d gone from invisible to transparent, with little time spent anywhere in between.

“Slender, black hair, fair skin and striking eyes… maybe Corvo Attano has a ‘type.’ And there were rumors about his younger days, here in Karnaca.”

“Let those rumors stay buried,” he said, his voice soft as the blush finally passed from his face. “Theodanis Abele carried them among his many regrets when he died.”

Corvo had received an officer’s commission from the Duke himself at age sixteen, and with it the resentment of much of the rest of the Grand Guard. As he’d climbed through the ranks, rumors of favoritism followed him. Some rumored that Duke Theodanis was enamored with the striking young swordsman. Others, that Corvo had done things to solicit that favor. In the end, the Duke had sent him to Dunwall to give his career a chance to outrun scandal. 

It was when the nameless man saw the curious look on Valentino’s face that he realized the seemingly off-handed remark had been a test. Was it that he knew these things at all, or that his answer had been genuine? No feigned offense or forced, jealous indignation.

The look of shrewd assessment passed and Valentino’s expression resolved into one of gentle sympathy. 

“ _Now_ I believe you.”


	19. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The former Outsider teaches Billie how to patch the holes in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Black is starting to feel sassy again.
> 
> I can't claim I especially understand how the Void works in canon or what it 'really' is. This is just my theory, my headcanon, that fits the lore as I understand it. Or pretty close, anyway. Maybe it's not weird enough or horrifying enough or full of fucking tentacles but you probably have noticed by now that I woobify everything pretty hard. I'm just a stupid fangirl.

They chose a crisp and clear night for their “practice,” as the nameless man had put it. Billie had found a Hollow at the entrance to the Shindaerey Miner’s Family Committee building, off the Battista District’s main square. They went in the smallest hours of the morning, when even the Guard patrols were half asleep, and they travelled by the rooftops, Billie with an arm around her unnamed friend to hoist him through one Displacement after another. He tolerated the experience well, though Billie could only imagine how disorienting it must have been to be her passenger.

When they reached the square, Billie left her friend to watch from a balcony while she made certain the patrols wouldn’t disturb them. A few members of the Grand Guard would wake up the next morning under bushes or in shadowed doorways, coats damp with dew.

Then they stood together under a pool of lamplight at the Committee Building’s door.

“What do you see?”

“This, where they’ve posted the hours and the request for donations. There’s also another poster. It says Lucia Pastor is missing and it’s offering a reward to anyone who has information.”

The man stepped forward, looking at the placard. He reached up to touch it. “Guide my hand.”

Billie took his wrist and did so. 

He shut his eyes the moment his fingertips touched the Hollow. “I… hear them, even if I can’t see them. Whispers. Then, shadows. Like the fading after-image of the sight I used to have.” He drew back with a tense frown on his face. Billie could tell he didn’t want to revisit these things. They haunted him enough as it was.

“Before you reach for it, let me explain what you need to do. You might not be able to hear me, once it begins.”

Billie nodded. “Try to be a _little_ less cryptic than your usual, but alright. I’m listening.”

He looked irritated at that. “Someday I hope you learn just what you ask for when you tell me to be succinct about things even Natural Philosophers don’t understand.”

Billie smirked at that. “I’m just asking you to _try_.”

“I always do,” he said.

He paced away from her, his hands clasped behind his back, his head down while he thought. “For as long as I’ve existed, people have used the ocean as a metaphor for the Void. All metaphors are imperfect, but this one we can use. Imagine the Void as an ocean, and this world is an island in it. There are archipelagos, whole chains of islands all around us, because the Void is _possibility_. The islands are the world as it could have been, the world as it could yet be. Everything that ever was, and everything that _never_ was are equal in the Void. ‘Is’ and ‘is not’ are things that belong to our world.”

Billie nodded. “I’m with you so far.”

“Now imagine the islands aren’t islands, exactly. They float on this ocean like ships. And the Hollows, like this one, are places where the ships have collided, and both broken hulls are taking on water.”

Billie nodded again. “You mentioned that before. You said time was bleeding into itself around me.”

“You had been a Hollow yourself,” he said.

Billie shuddered.

“It’s nice to know you were paying attention,” he said, the corner of his mouth giving a tiny sideways twitch. To think she’d missed that occasional touch of smugness over the past week or so.

“Just get on with it, Black.”

“Here’s where the metaphor breaks down,” he said. “The other realities that are colliding with ours… they become… entangled. The things the Hollows show us are, in their own contexts, also _real_. It’s a battle between two perfectly matched opponents, or two equally loud symphonies trying to be heard at the same time. Left to itself, the conflict has no resolution.”

“So I’m here to resolve it.”

“This is why you were Daud’s favorite,” Black said with another quirk of his lips.

“Spare me,” Billie said flatly.

“You’re correct,” he said, continuing. “When you use the Eye, you’ll be able to open a window into the Void and guide your vision to the place where the histories of our world and the other one intersecting it diverge. You’ll find that branching point… and when you do, you need to use the knife to prune the other branch away.”

“You want me to cut… _reality_ ,” Billie said. “With a knife.”

“A knife made of the substance of possibility itself.”

“Black, my head hurts just thinking about this.”

“Then don’t think. Just act.”

Billie sighed heavily. “Right. Maybe it’ll make more sense in practice.”

Black nodded to her, all hints of teasing gone from his expression. “You’ve come this far, learning to use the Void on your own as you pressed forward. This is no different. When you cut away that branch, it’s likely you’ll close not just this hollow, but others that stemmed from the same crux.”

“Then maybe I don’t have as many fires to put out as I thought I did. That’s good news, at least.”

Billie began to extend her right hand, only to have Black touch her wrist. 

“Billie…” He was frowning.

“What is it?”

“When you do this, you’ll see the world as I saw it. Knowledge can be a bitter kind of power, and some of the things your sight will show you…” He looked down. “I’m sorry for what you might see. The Void contains more nightmares than fairytale endings by far. Just remember… you’re here with the one person in the world who will understand.”

Billie looked the nameless man in the eyes and she nodded. As she reached for the Hollow with her right hand, Black took her left in his own.

The Void opened before her.

It was like the way she felt while she prepared to Displace herself. She could feel her body existing in two places at once, or so nearly at once that it made no difference, like two possibilities interwoven in the imperceivable beat of present becoming future. She was back in the square in the Battista district, and she was in the Void.

The Void was an ocean of possibility. Around her unfurled a history of things that had never been.

A boy in his late teens, with dark brown hair and a sour look on his face, pasted up the poster she had seen. The sun rushed the wrong way through the sky, and the daily breadline stood crowded around the Committee Building’s locked doors. A familiar rosey-cheeked cook stood before the crowd, trying to calm them, trying to reassure them, even though she had no answers herself. 

The sun set on the wrong side of the sky. In the dead of night, a pair of Overseers dragged Lucia Pastor out of her own rooms on the building’s upper floor.

That was where Billie saw a familiar flicker in her vision. Something in this tableau that was both there and not there. There was some odd bundle on the living room sofa, huddled under blankets. When she focused on it, the scene changed. The Overseers vanished, and Lucia was sound asleep in her own bed.

Billie looked closer. Two thin, haggard children, barely teens, holding onto each other as they slept.

She looked closer. She saw them rousted out of the gutter in the alley beside her own apartment. She turned and knew she would see her friend standing there, banging out an alarm on a kitchen pot, shouting out a warning.

Forward again, and she saw a bolt shot through the neck of one of the Overseers that came to take him. She knew immediately it was one of the Overseers who would’ve come for Lucia Pastor. 

It all came back to Black’s arrest by the Abbey. If he hadn’t risked himself, she wouldn’t have shot that Overseer. She wouldn’t have gone to the Abbey’s headquarters and just about swept it clean to get him back. Those two children in the alley wouldn’t have found their way to shelter in the Family Committee building and then been taken in by Lucia herself.

So there had to be a reality where Black didn’t risk himself. Or he didn’t get taken captive, or else she left him to his fate. But she looked for those branches and found none. If Black was there, sharing that apartment with her, there was no reality where he didn’t raise that alarm. And there was no reality where she didn’t stick her neck out for him, once trouble came his way.

The branch had to be farther back.

She raised her eyes to Shindaerey Peak and found it there.

She saw herself, with the knife poised against her helpless friend’s chest.

She saw the bitter twist of her own features. No one could know better what was passing through this other self’s mind. She remembered standing at this threshold.

She hadn’t known him, then. Yet seeing him there, frozen in a scream she knew had lasted centuries, she had still pitied him. 

She knew him now, though. She knew him as a cryptic little shit who challenged everyone to be a better version of themselves. She knew him as someone who couldn’t turn his back on the suffering he saw around him. She knew him as a man who still struggled every day with the memory of this captivity and the ritual that had condemned him to it. And she knew him as someone strong enough to forgive her, brave enough to trust her even after she’d had him at the end of her knife. 

Now she felt something deeper than pity. It was anguish so strong it made her ache down to her bones.

“When did you become my _best friend?”_ She touched his face with her gloved hand. He was cold as the stone that gripped him. She had to remind herself this wasn’t real. Or at least, this wasn’t the reality she belonged to. He was free and alive, waiting for her back in the square.

But in that moment, he had been at her mercy. She remembered the moment of pause where she had tried to decide if pity made any difference. 

This was the Billie Lurk who had chosen as Daud would have chosen. Be careful of sentiment, Daud would have warned. Every attachment could turn into a trap, every tender thing was nothing but dead weight. There was no redemption for anyone who’d walked the path they’d chosen. Only some vague hope that in the end, this broken world _deserved_ them.

This Billie would never wake up in bed next to Reese Kavanaugh. This Billie would never sit across the breakfast table from the strangest, dearest friend she’d never expected to find. With an innocent man’s blood on her hands she would walk out of the Void and she would carry its darkness with her.

“You aren’t me,” she murmured. “I know you’re still in here with me, but we’re not going down this road. It doesn’t go anywhere you’d want to travel.” With tears burning in her eyes, she drove her knife into her other self’s heart.

Light burst from the tip of her blade. She felt as if she was falling, surrounded in brightness, but at the same time, she felt as light as a dream. Something was ringing through her thoughts, through her heart. A name she couldn’t quite hear, slipping through her fingers like water.

Then she was back in front of the Family Committee building with her friend looking at her in clear concern. The Hollow was closed, gone.

“Billie. What did you see?”

Billie rubbed at her eyes to clear them. “That the world ends up a lot poorer without you in it. My world, most of all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THREE UPDATES A WEEK starting now. Merr chringus, fam. See you Wednesday for a really in-depth Lurk/Black conversation, and Friday for more fucking bombs dropped that I think you're gonna like.


	20. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Black and Billie Lurk have a long talk about past choices, some regretful and others not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found myself remembering some Twitter comment from Harvey about how the Outsider would not be a great first choice of characters to get drunk with. I picture him being a bit rambling and 'heavy' even when he's not getting emotional as he does here. But sometimes you need to give vent to these things and let it wash past you like bad weather. This conversation dissects some of DotO's events from the Outsider's perspective, at least as I interpret it.

“We should talk,” he said then. The nameless man paced away from the lamplight, to a small unmanned guard station at the corner of the square. There was a large bottle of Old Dunwall there, unopened, that he casually swiped.

He made a face when he took a swig. He was still making up his mind about alcohol. This, though, he remembered from visiting Corvo in his dreams; he hadn’t been able to taste the whiskey he’d had there, so much as taste Corvo’s memory of whiskey, his enjoyment of it. It helped, the way a sip of Valentino’s espresso had settled his mind about coffee. After tasting it at its best, his mouth understood it better. 

He returned to Billie, held out the bottle. “Do you have any favorite rooftops?”

She took it, stony-faced and inscrutable. “What do you want to talk about? What do you think it will change?”

“There are things left unspoken between us. It’s time they were dragged out into the light.”

He saw Billie’s shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath, a heavy sigh. Then she hooked her arm around his waist, and his arm around her shoulders. She displaced them from balcony to awning, from rooftop to rooftop. He stumbled a few steps when she let him go.

They were on a platform built onto the trunk of a massive tree. From it, they could see all the way to the bay.

Billie sat at the edge of the platform, legs dangling. She opened the bottle again and took a drink so deep, her friend thought he felt his throat burn just watching.

“Why did you do this to me? Why did you give me this eye?”

The nameless man sat beside her, one knee up, his heel on the platform’s edge. “Many reasons. Whether any of them justify the suffering it brings you, I’m not sure. Only you can judge.” She passed the bottle back to him, and he took another swig. It was a little easier, this time. A little better on his tongue. “You wrote in your logbook that you wondered if you were meant to judge me from on high the way Daud had taught you to pass judgment on the people of Dunwall.” He drank again. “You were.

“Daud believed I never cared about the consequences of my influence on the world. Why should I, when nothing could ever touch me? But there you were, someone who had walked both sides of the line between right and wrong, murder and mercy. Someone who had witnessed everything play out in Dunwall and in Karnaca. You had seen my Mark used for both good and ill, and you, at last, could bring the consequences home to me -- a verdict only you could deliver.”

“So you gave me power that didn’t depend on you.”

“Yes. Enough power to overcome the cult and the Envisioned. That was another reason I changed you the way I did. I saw you taking aim at the Eyeless like a loaded rifle. Whatever became of me, they would fall first.” He had a snarl on his face he did his best to subdue. Whenever he spoke of the cult, there was venom on his tongue. “And if any were left standing, the power of the Eye would still be yours in the end.”

“You hate them even more than I do. By the time I reached you in the Void, I knew that much.”

“They preyed on me, and then they used that ritual to enforce their own twisted order on the world. That power had to be taken from their hands. But… it has to exist. Without it this world is just a ship without a rudder, no one at the helm.

“You’ve seen through my eyes. You understand now. The Void is endless, and our world, our lives, are nothing to it. The world will continue even if every living man and woman dies. The Void will continue even if this world crumbles. When they created me, I was a single, fixed point, bound at the place where the Void touches the world. It was by me that the world could sort reality from possibility. It was through me that possibility could be channeled to _alter_ reality. And while the fate of the world, the fate of its people, is nothing to the Void… it was something to me.”

“So you placed _me_ at the helm. You foisted it off on me.”

“You were going to kill me. I considered that volunteering, in a sense.”

“You ass.”

“I didn’t think it was a choice I would live to regret.”

“Regret?” Billie took another drink from the bottle.

“I _am_ sorry, for the strangeness, the suffering, all the things I can’t undo. What I can do is try to help you bear it. And I will, as long as you want me to.”

“But… why _me_ out of all the people in the world? You picked a killer, a pariah. You could’ve picked Corvo Attano, if you’re so impressed with him.”

“He’s suffered enough from the Void’s touch on his life.” The nameless man took the bottle back and drank almost deeply enough to match Billie. “Even the love I took from him was too greedy, too much. As for you… you were Void-touched, and you were like me. Another child of the streets, another pariah, alone. And if you were going to judge me, maybe you should see the world through my eyes. Maybe you were the one person who could understand.

“Which leads me to a question for you. Why did you spare my life? Was it only pity?”

Billie looked at him while she thought about his question. He could almost feel the Eye on him.

“More than that. Daud told me the Void felt like you’d cried out for help and no one answered. When I saw you there, frozen in a scream, I knew why. I didn’t just pity you, I _hurt_ for you. I remember when you told me the idea that anybody deserves anything is just fiction. When I looked at you, that fiction crumbled. I didn’t know if I wanted the world to be fair or if I just wanted it to be kind, but I knew what I was looking at was wrong.” 

She sipped from the bottle when he offered it back. “Ever since Daud set me on you I had doubts. I had questions. He was unwavering about all the blame he placed on you, and I think I knew it was because he _needed_ that. He needed to believe it wasn’t all on him, and that redemption is something a person can earn.

“But I know that it’s not. Forgiveness is given, not taken, and the people who need it the most aren’t the ones who can prove they deserve it.”

He looked at Billie with fascination on his face.

“If we’re taking turns,” she said, “Were you afraid of me? Were you so completely certain that I would do it?”

From the look on her face, she could see the truth even before he gave a small, restrained nod. A shadow passed over her, and she drank again, a bitter twist to her mouth. “Feared by the Outsider himself. I should be proud.”

“We know each other now. I have always seen more in you than your worst. Now more than ever, I don’t believe your past is what defines you. I’ve seen the warmth you try to keep hidden. You’ve cared for me. You’ve earned my trust.” He paused. “If we’re taking turns,” he echoed, “Have I earned yours? Are we friends now, Billie Lurk?”

“I’m a little pissed you even have to ask that,” Billie said. She took another drink and passed the bottle back. “We’re friends. You’re the closest friend I’ve had in a long time. I wouldn’t be hauling your nonexistent ass across the rooftops and messing with this occult bullshit if I didn’t trust you.”

“My _nonexistent_ ...?”

“Your ass. The one you don’t have.”

“My-- It’s-- “

“My turn, now. And drink up, you’re gonna need it.” Billie laid back on the platform, looking up through the branches of the tree. She could see the stars through the gaps between the leaves.

“If you’re insisting I stay put and wait for Corvo Attano himself to darken our doorstep… you are going to tell me about this whole thing that’s so important to you that you’d put my damned head on the block.”

“I still don’t believe he’s going to do you harm.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

He looked at her and decided she was right about the drink. Even with his face starting to flush, and his tongue feeling loose, he needed another. He sipped from the bottle until he felt ready to speak. “My death loomed in front of me. Walls of black closing in, my sight turning to blindness. The moment you found that lead about the Albarca Baths, my fate was sealed. As I told you… I was afraid.”

Another sip, and he laid back just as Billie had. Looking up at the stars he thought he could feel the world turning. “I wanted something I could put my mind to besides what was coming for me. I wanted comfort, I wanted companionship, I wanted everything the Void denied me. If I couldn’t have it in full I would grasp at what scraps I could.”

He breathed deeply and sighed, remembering that night. “He was the clear choice, even though I wasn’t sure why at first. He was skeptical of me, he didn’t want my favor. But I believed he wouldn’t use me. I thought he would refuse me and that would be all, just a strange dream, forgotten over breakfast. But... he didn’t reject me. He took me on as if it was a challenge.”

His face felt hotter than before, and it was definitely more than the whiskey he was flushed with. 

Billie was looking at him with obvious amusement. “So what is _that_ like, being somebody’s wet dream?”

His flush deepened and he looked away. “Indirect,” he said. “I couldn’t experience anything myself, but I could skim some of the pleasure from his memories like cream off a jug of milk. What I experienced was the vague impression of touch, as Corvo’s mind expected it to feel.” He sat up long enough to take another heavy drink. It wasn’t the world that was spinning, so much as his head.

“Have you done much of that?”

“No. And never for…” He swallowed the word instead. “Very early in my time in the Void I would do it to try and cobble together something like living. It was never satisfying. It was a reminder of all the the things I would never truly know.” His lips quirked in a small smile. “I did it for food, mostly. Stealing food from dreams just like I had from street vendors as a boy. The world was full of things I’d never tasted. Why not try them all?”

“The Outsider rummaging through people’s dreams for _snacks?_ ”

“Keep in mind that in those years the Outsider was a gawkish, half-starved teenager and a dubious legend being spread by a mad cult.”

Billie noticed the topic had drifted. “But why did you pick Corvo Attano for a booty call? It had to be one of your Marked?”

“It wasn’t a…” He propped himself up on one elbow long enough to take another drink, then lay back again and collected his thoughts. 

“Corvo Attano, Karnaca’s golden son. Born and raised here in the Battista District, he rose to the very top of Imperial society. There are two ways a man like that can look at the all the ‘little people’. Some look back and remember where they came from. Others look down and believe they rose for a reason. I had no idea which he was, but when the love of his life died in his arms I knew Dunwall was going to find out.

“While he spent months in Coldridge prison, I picked over all the paths that branched out before him. In some of them he died on the headsman’s block. In others, he made his escape, and after that, he would become either the Empire’s savior or its blood-drenched executioner. I saw his fury, I heard his cries for justice. I saw his heartbreak and his longing for the family he had lost. It could have gone either way, and after what had become of Daud and of Delilah, I worried that it would be my Mark that would tip the scale.

“So I withheld it while he suffered in the torturer’s chair, while he lived in filth and darkness and slowly starved. When he escaped, I gave him my magic at last. Even if he drowned Dunwall in blood, he would put a stop to those other two.

“He could have been worse than either of them. He could have been worse than both of them combined. But he wasn’t. He turned away from that path every time, choosing instead the one that would give him a future with his daughter safe and happy by his side. He listened to the Heart I gave him, and he grieved, and he pieced his lost love’s empire back together as well as he was able.

“I praised him for it. I’ve known so few like him who took my gift and used it with care, his touch on the world feather-light for all his power. I think of him and wonder if I loved him well before the night I went to him. In the time after that first night, I saw his loneliness. His need and mine clasped together like hook and eye. He needed the kind of warmth he hadn’t had in over a decade. I needed someone who would remember me.

“It was more than the distraction I had promised myself. I could feel his thoughts returning to me again and again over the days that followed. I went back to him after I gave you the knife. That time was warmer. His dream turned tender, cast its hue over the whole of the night. His heart was _pulling_ at me. He wanted to know me.”

He heard his own voice break. He swallowed, but he continued. Billie’s expression had turned thoughtful, serious.

“The third time I went to him, it was to say goodbye to a man who had placed his heart in my hands for no better reason than that I had _asked._ I had given him love just to tear it away, just for him to lose a piece of himself on the end of a blade. Again.” His own hands curled into fists at the memory of how badly he’d wanted to hold on. “And that.. is why I wrote to him.” His breath was coming in broken spasms. When he’d said those farewells, centuries in the Void had robbed him of tears. They came to him now.

He felt Billie’s hand holding his. Her touch was always a comfort. It brought him back to the way she’d caught him when the Void released its hold. There had been a promise in that gesture, intended or not, and she had affirmed it over and over again. She would catch him if he fell.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I have no idea what future there is for us. I don’t know if a lasting love can be forged out of a handful of bittersweet dreams. But I know he shed tears for me. And when I let him go, it wasn’t because I wanted to.”

Billie sat up then, taking the bottle and setting it away out of reach. He felt her stroking his hair, gentle and soothing.

“I should’ve known you wouldn’t be a happy drunk,” she murmured. 

It earned one of his brief, shy laughs.


	21. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valentino Bianchi comes knocking with messages for his neighbors. He finds himself neck-deep in things that defy belief, but are nevertheless true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FIRST OF ALL, the stupendously talented [rgb-hex](http://rgb-hex.tumblr.com/) drew [art for SNSB](http://rgb-hex.tumblr.com/post/168511171498/hey-its-me-again-click-for-captions), featuring a scene from the end of chapter 10, and a look at Black with plenty of stubble and not enough sleep.
> 
> Valentino is indisputably In Cahoots with the gang as of this chapter, and is working now more for Corvo personally than the Empire as a whole. He isn't the highest ranking agent in Karnaca by a long shot (and he has no desire at all to quit his day job), but due to his existing relationship with certain persons of interest, this has been placed in his lap by his superiors.

A courier arrived at their door on the morning of the 10th of Wind, just as Billie had predicted. She encouraged her friend to try on the new clothes just to make sure everything was as ordered; he had no complaints. When he emerged from his room he was wearing dark grey trousers with navy blue bracers that crossed between his shoulder blades. The white shirt he wore was particularly fine, while cut slightly generous for comfort’s sake. 

Up until now he’d had cast-offs that Reese had managed to scrounge for him, to supplement the one suit of clothes he’d somehow walked out of the Void with. Billie had tried inquiring about those, and his answer had amounted to his own cryptic version of “Don’t ask me, I just worked there.”

It had been awhile since she’d seen him looking this good. While she hadn’t thought he’d been particularly focused on his appearance or his clothing, he clearly felt better, too.

“What do you think?” He said while he was rolling up his sleeves.

“Let me see.” Billie leaned back against the edge of the kitchen table. “Turn around.”

He did, if a bit self-consciously.

“Huh. Those pants almost make it look like you have an ass.”

She’d only gotten a glimpse of his affronted look before he turned away, attention seized by a loud knock on the door.

Billie pushed away from the table to answer it. Valentino Bianchi was standing on the other side of the door with eyes wide and a sheaf of papers in his hand.

“What’s this about, Bianchi?” It was too soon for him to have new orders, Billie thought. Or at least, to have new orders based on his own report. She let him inside and locked the door behind him.

“It was true. Every void-damned word.” He was shaking his head and shuffling through his papers. He pulled out a sheet and thrust it towards Billie. “First of all, there’s this.”

It was a telegraph, but it was also stamped, sealed, and notarized. It was an Imperial proclamation.

It was a _pardon._ It was a full pardon from the Empress herself.

“This… this can’t be real.” Billie held it at arm’s length, as though it would properly vanish if she just looked at it at a different angle.

“The Grand Guard is already printing a notice and taking down your posters. You can go see for yourself, but we have more to discuss.”

The nameless man was leaning in, trying to get a better look at the telegraph. Billie handed it over to him, still feeling stunned.

“If this is forged it was forged very well.”

“Fuck. What did you _say_ to him?”

“Only the truth.”

This wasn’t getting any easier to believe. She’d been a wanted criminal for so much of her life that it was impossible to imagine a world where she didn’t have to hide. She sat down on the sofa. Her head was spinning and her legs felt weak.

“There is a message for you, also, Ms. Lurk. I’m not certain this pardon is as much of a gift as it might seem.” Valentino handed Billie a telegraph slip.

“‘What remains will be settled between you and me, face to face,’” she read. She sat back in her chair. “Why do I get the feeling it’s not a fireside chat he’s talking about.”

Valentino frowned sympathetically. “On the other hand, if he wished you harm, I’m not so sure he’d warn you he was coming. Besides, the remainder of my orders were to see to not only Mr. Black’s safety, but yours as well. He may _actually_ want to talk, fireside or no.”

“I’m not going to hold my breath,” Billie said, leaning the back of her head against the back of the sofa.

“And now, Mister Black,” Valentino continued with a sigh. “I woke up this morning believing Corvo Attano was the most important man in the Empire. But after seeing these orders, I do believe it may be _you.”_

Valentino looked around their small kitchen. He stepped into it and then returned with a bottle of Orbon rum and three glasses.

He poured generously. Especially for Billie.

“I have orders to protect you, but as discreetly as possible. No involvement from the Grand Guard, only people vetted and employed through me. My orders also specify that the Abbey in particular should not be allowed anywhere near you. All expenses authorized, as well. I’m told to make you comfortable.

“And then there’s this.” Valentino pulled a fresh printing of the day’s Karnaca Gazette from his bundle.

Royal Protector to Return to Karnaca. Lord Corvo Attano Leading Mission of Relief, Restoration.

“He departed Dunwall on the Jessamine on the 6th of Wind. I’d say he got your letter, Mister Black.” Then he handed a small telegraph paper to the nameless man. “All of this was worded rather oddly. My orders contain a _description_ of you but not your name.”

“How did he describe me?” Black wore a hint of a smirk.

“Let’s see…” Bianchi quoted from a paper he unfolded. “‘A man likely to be keeping company with person of interest Billie Lurk. Black hair, fair skin, medium height, eye color… unknown?’” Valentino gave him a look of perplexity and shook his head. “Why would your eye color be ‘unknown’? In any case… ‘Late twenties to early thirties, attractive, well-spoken.’ Rather complementary, I’d say.”

Black had a faint blush on his cheekbones. He took a sip of rum, then opened the folded telegraph. “‘Abide,’” he read aloud. “‘I run the backs of the waves. The fastest ship will carry me to you.’”

“The Jessamine isn’t exactly the fastest ship,” Valentino said dryly. “Poetic license, I suppose.”

Black took a deeper drink of his rum. From the look on his face, he was still making up his mind about the taste. He sat down on the other end of the sofa and Billie realized he was feeling about as dazed as she was.

“I should tell you now,” Valentino said as he sat on the edge of a threadbare upholstered chair on the other side of their makeshift coffee table. “Under these orders, in many respects I work for _you_. Both of you. I’ve already contacted the property company about buying this building, to better protect your privacy. I’ll place the deed in your hands when I have it. My duty is to make sure that when the Royal Protector arrives, he finds you both safe and well-kept. I think fretting over Ms. Lurk’s safety would be astoundingly pointless, but Mister Black? I may need to keep you closer than you would like.”

The nameless man was staring at the telegraph in his hand, and had quickly downed most of his rum. “Meaning what, exactly?”

“I can’t let you leave this building without an escort. That escort can be me, it can be Ms. Lurk, or it can be one of the people I’m going to hire to keep this place secure. It also means you need to start carrying a pistol. If you don’t know how to shoot, I’ll teach you.”

While Billie’s nameless friend considered that, they all heard the sound of footsteps racing up the stairs.

“Billie!! Billie, you won’t believe this!” It was clearly Reese pounding on their door this time. 

Billie opened it to find her standing there with a partly-torn posting in her hand. It was a notice that the wanted criminal Billie Lurk had been pardoned by the Empress ‘for bravery in service to the Empire’, and all bounties for her capture were revoked.

It still seemed unreal.

While she looked at the posting, Reese was facing the two men in the room; Black on the sofa with an empty glass in his hand and Valentino spreading his papers over the coffee table.

“So you’re Bianchi,” she said.

Billie had told her about the Imperial Spy, and explained apologetically that Reese should avoid their apartment while they tried to figure out what to do about him. Reese was a criminal as well, if a less violent, less _wanted_ and high-profile criminal.

Valentino rose to refill the nameless man’s glass. “Valentino Bianchi, very much at your service,” he said.

“This has something to do with you, doesn’t it,” Reese said as she walked over to the sofa. She watched Black sipping at the dark rum in his glass and looking as intense as ever.

“Not as much as I might prefer. I feel a bit like a passenger on a runaway carriage, to be quite honest.”

“It’s my fault,” the nameless man interjected. 

Billie rejoined them with a glass for Reese. She poured for her, then added more to her own. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Not really.”

“Just… catch me up, will you?” Reese paused. “You look nice today, Black.”

That got her a fleeting half-smile, before he took another drink. “Fifteen years ago, Billie Lurk had a hand in the assassination of Empress Jessamine Kaldwin, the love of Corvo Attano’s life. A little over two weeks ago, my would-be assassin Billie Lurk delivered me from imprisonment, not only sparing my life, but saving it.”

“I don’t see--”

“Corvo and I…” The nameless man trailed off, choosing to simply down the rest of his rum.

The way he referred to the Lord Protector of the Empire by his first name said enough. Reese looked incredulous. She’d been able to accept that their friend had been, until recently, the inscrutable god of the Void. But that he was also the Royal Protector’s _lover_? “You’re _kidding.”_

Reese pulled an ottoman up beside Billie’s end of the sofa and sat down, half-leaning against Billie’s knees. 

“He’s not,” Billie said, rubbing Reese’s shoulder with her hand.

The nameless man held out his glass to Bianchi for yet another refill. “I wish I could see how this will play out. But the sight I once had would show me just as many ways it could end in disaster. Part of me still wants to know.”

“I’m not going to run,” Billie said to him. “You were right. I’ve made a home here.” 

Reese turned to her with a look so pointed Billie felt it stab her through the heart. 

“I wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye…”

Reese was back on her feet, staring Billie down. “No. _Fuck_ goodbyes, Billie! If you go anywhere I’m going with you, I don’t care who’s after your head. Don’t you _dare_ make choices for me.”

Billie stared at her, lips slightly parted. With Bianchi watching them, Reese had kept her distance as Billie had asked her to, but there was so much Billie hadn’t told her, enforcing a distance of her own. Billie rose up and stepped close, clasped her shoulders with a strong grip. “I’m sorry. I’m here.”

Reese hugged her tight, burying her face against Billie’s shoulder. “Yeah, and you’d better _stay_ here.”

When Billie sat back down she pulled Reese with her, into her lap. The nameless man let Reese lay her legs across his lap. 

“You’ve both cut me out of the loop,” Reese said. “Don’t think I’m less angry just because I’m letting you cuddle.”

“The fault there is mine, I think,” Bianchi said, standing awkwardly and slowly sinking back to his seat. “I know I’ve intruded, and now I’ve set your whole world on its ear. I wish I could offer you more than reassurances, but I am not your enemy. Not to any of you.”

Billie looked at him, this time letting her Eye gaze on things beneath the skin of reality. There was a spark in him, soft, steady and golden. “He’s telling the truth,” she said.

“Maybe we should do the same,” said the nameless man.

Billie looked at him, then pointed to Valentino with a quick movement of her chin. “Your call.”

Black gave one of his subdued half-smiles and tossed back the rest of his rum. “You’ve seen the gaps in this story, Valentino Bianchi. You’ve catalogued them and you’ve kept them to yourself, patiently waiting to see the full picture. I’ll give you the piece you’re missing.

“No one knows my name because no one has spoken it in almost five thousand years. No one knows the color of my eyes because they were closed for centuries. Two weeks ago, Billie Lurk had me at her mercy, but rather than ending my life, she delivered me from a captivity that had held me since the dawn of history.

“I am no longer, but I was the Outsider.”

Valentino’s first impulse was clearly to reject the idea. But then he gave the nameless man, the former Outsider, one of his shrewd looks. 

“That is utterly preposterous,” he said after a long moment of thought. “Yet… it fits.”

There had been rumors since the days of the plague that Corvo Attano had abilities beyond other men. Rumors that claimed he practiced witchcraft. Those rumors had been enough for the Abbey to take seriously, at least. There had been attempts to spy, if discrete ones, the Agency and the Abbey constantly tiptoeing around one another in Dunwall Tower over the years.

Since the Coup, people believed in witchcraft again. Mostly the people of Dunwall, but word had travelled. Delilah Copperspoon had been a genuine witch. Her close confidant and supporter, the former curator of the Royal Conservatory, had been operating a coven there. Between that and the subsequent Abbey investigation, that part of Karnaca had become a death trap; anyone venturing in had good odds of never being seen again alive.

“Then there’s truth in that song,” Valentino mused aloud. “The Month of Darkness. You were sacrificed unwilling--” He trailed off, remembering the nameless man trying to shave, only able to hold the blade against his own neck after a stiff drink. He sank back into his chair, drinking directly from the bottle. “Oh, Void. It’s true.”

Valentino slowly turned his attention to Billie and Reese, who each nodded to him. His expression turned to one of puzzled awe in regards to Billie. “You went... You tried to assassinate the Outsider? And you nearly accomplished it?” He shook his head in disbelief. “But you still think you should be worried about Corvo Attano?”

“I heard that when he came for Daud, no one even _saw_ him. He’s still maybe the best swordsman in the Isles, and he’s a lot bigger than I am. If he got the jump on me? Could go either way.”

“I still rather think _he_ should be worried about _you_ , Ms. Lurk.”

Reese smirked up at Billie. “He’s got a point.”

“No,” said the nameless man from his side of the sofa. “It’s _beside_ the point when they won’t be fighting. Either of you pulls a blade on the other, put it through me first. I have no wish to live in this world without either one of you.”

Billie sighed. Her friend was so deadly earnest about these things that it hurt, and this fight that was pure speculation to the rest of them was an absolutely real threat in his mind. It probably didn’t help that he was at least half drunk. “Don’t get upset, Black, I’m not going to hurt your boyfriend.”

Reese stared as the nameless man instantly flushed pink. 

Meanwhile, Bianchi was still trying to process what he’d learned. He’d risen from his chair and started pacing, now and then turning to the once-Outsider and gesticulating broadly. He’d moved on from disbelief to something like compassionate outrage.

“You mean-- all of it’s true? You were only a boy when they… It’s monstrous! I can scarcely even…” Then, a stricken look on his face: “In the name of all that is good, my friend, are you _alright_? I would move Shindaerey Peak itself to try and make amends for what you’ve gone through, with or without orders! It’s abominable!”

“It was over four thousand years ago, Valentino.” Billie watched as Black got to his unsteady feet and gripped Valentino’s shoulders, trying desperately to reassure him. She realized Black hadn’t been there when she’d told Reese the whole story, giving Reese more of a chance to get a handle on her own anger and sympathy. 

Reese was still there in her lap, Billie stroking the curve of her slim back. “So, he’s really with Corvo Attano?” Reese asked. “The Royal Protector? When did he _tell_ you this? And yes, I’m mad at you for not telling me. Just so we’re clear.”

“Apparently he jumped the Royal Protector because he was afraid he was going to die a virgin,” Billie said. “So in a way it’s my fault. But things got serious right at the end, and Black wrote to Corvo so he wouldn’t go on thinking he was dead.”

“So Lord Attano knows that you’re the one who got his lover out of the Void, and that’s what all the fuss is about,” Reese said. “This puts you in a pretty weird position.”

“No kidding.” Billie sighed, then leaned in and kissed Reese’s lips. “It’s just… really good to see you again. Not in the shop, not having to rush back out.”

“Missed you too, Billie.” Reese kissed her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It takes four to six days for communication to reach Karnaca from Dunwall, depending on ocean currents, weather, and lighting a fire under somebody's ass. Corvo left Dunwall on Wind 6, this chapter takes place on Wind 10. The Jessamine won't arrive until around Wind 20... but the Kestrel travelling through the Cullero Gap can make Karnaca in about six days.
> 
> That would be Wind 12.


	22. Interlude 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Desire reasserts itself. Pleasure is more than he remembered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: EXPLICIT. POINTLESS SMUT. Brief CSA reference.
> 
> former Outsider solo smut, too short and frivolous to really be a chapter. Was divided about even leaving this in.

Desire came back to him that night.

Maybe it was the alcohol, though he was mostly sober when he woke in the dead of night. Maybe it was the way thinking of Corvo was no longer inextricably tangled up with grief. Maybe it was the way his thoughts had kept straying to how well Corvo’s clothes fit his body while he’d been trying on his own. 

He woke to the dark and quiet of his room and the feeling of his erection straining against the flannel pants he wore to bed. He hitched the drawstring waistband down past his hips and let the heel of his hand brush the underside of his cock. Even that light touch was enough to make it flex, his tip kissing his stomach with a drop of warm precum.

He thought of grabbing Corvo by his hair and forcing his head down. He thought of the larger man sucking him obediently, diligently, letting him thrust into his mouth until Corvo’s beard tickled at his groin. He could imagine holding his head down with one hand while the other caressed his face, tracing his cheekbone, then the sharp angle of Corvo’s jaw.

He wrapped his hand around his own shaft and stroked, just slowly for now. The sensation was already enough to make his toes curl.

He had thought he remembered this, at least to some degree. He’d been old enough before they’d murdered him that he at least knew the touch of his own hand. What _they_ had done to him he removed from consideration. That wasn’t pleasure, no matter what they made his body submit to. No matter what the drugs coaxed from him.

This was stronger than what he thought he knew. Stronger by far, by so much he felt dizzy with it, intoxicated afresh and nearly a slave to this need.

He wanted to explore it. He wanted to savor it. He pressed the pads of his fingers against the channel at the base of his cock and he waited for his excitement to ease back down. He waited with only his daydream of Corvo and the heavy pulse in his shaft.

He squirmed in spite of himself. He stroked himself again, letting his thumb rub across his tip. He found it wet, taut as a drum, and pushed the sheets off to look down at himself. He watched his thumb swipe over his thick tip again, and watched his precum form glistening threads as he lifted it away. His slit flared open for an instant and more clear wetness dripped from him, rolling its way down his shaft.

He thought of Corvo’s lips kissing him there, coming away just as wet. He thought of telling him just how to suck, just how to use his tongue. He reached down with his other hand to cup his own balls and imagined Corvo’s hand cradling them instead, keeping his whole sex tended to while his head bobbed on his shaft.

It didn’t take long at all for him to come.

He managed to swallow back all the noises that his spasming body wanted him to make. His hips bucked up from the mattress. His semen splashed across his belly and chest and he could feel his cock throbbing hard in his grip. And while he came, he imagined his hand on the back of Corvo’s neck, thought of him drinking down every drop.

He felt almost as hungry for pleasure as when he had started, with that fantasy in his head. His grip on his shaft tightened again, and he stroked himself with a rougher touch. He went over in his mind, the day Corvo's ship had left Dunwall, how far it had traveled, how long it would take for it to arrive.

It was going to be a long, desperate week.


	23. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billie Lurk and her nameless friend have business with Aramis Stilton.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing feels like accomplishing some tangible good in the world, and helping a friend.

“Meagan Foster. Or should I say, Billie Lurk.”

Aramis Stilton received his guests in the music room, only reluctantly rising from his piano. He’d had the butler pour brandy for them before sending the man on his way.

“You’ve occasion to celebrate, haven’t you? But what would I know, I get all my news from posters on the walls, or so it would seem.” Aramis crossed the room towards them, leaving his own glass on the piano behind him.

“And who, then, is this?” When Stilton held out his hand for the nameless man’s, he gave it. Stilton bowed to kiss it. 

Black was dressed in his finest things: A black peacoat with satin lining, collar turned up as he prefered; the deep indigo waistcoat he’d liked over a crisp white shirt; tailored black pants and short boots with a high polish. Even Billie had to admit to herself that he looked good. It made her feel a bit better that they had waited so long only to have the need for a disguise become moot. 

She hadn’t realised until that moment that to her friend Aramis, Black likely looked good enough to eat. Aramis Stilton, however, was a gentleman.

“His name is Mister Black,” Billie said. “I know I have a lot to explain. Maybe even apologize for. But we came because you need our help, Aramis, whether you know it or not.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mister Black.” Aramis nodded to him before he turned his attention back to Billie.

“Whatever you’re here for, Mea-- Billie. Let us clear the air before we get to that. You came in by my front door, and I hope that means you have some faith in me still. Sit and we’ll talk.”

This was her friend, but Billie felt anxious nonetheless. She sat on the edge of the sofa he gestured to, and Black sat down beside her, hands folded between his knees. 

“So… you know who I am now. And you know why I didn’t tell you.”

Stilton nodded slowly, only once. “I saw a familiar face on the posters going up all over town. I know the story Theodanis told me about the night Radanis died. But in all bloody honesty, he wasn’t there, and Radanis was always a wretched little snot. It was years before the truth slipped out of Luca when he was drunk at my dinner table. They drew first blood.” 

Stilton reached out and laid his broad, meaty hand over Billie’s. “I’m sorry, my dear, old friend. I’m sorry you’ve had to carry all the blame because no one wants to accept that a street urchin’s life is worth the same some noble brat’s. If you have anything to apologize for, let it be that it took you so long to visit. I hope that whatever help you need to give me, it’s not so dire that you and your handsome friend can’t stay for dinner.”

She swallowed to find her throat tight. She noticed that Black was looking at her, half smiling.

“I think you’ll find many of Meagan’s old friends will love you under any name, Billie.”

“Exactly so,” Aramis said. “I know what kind of woman you are. I don’t need a poster to tell me.”

Billie gave her old friend a warm look. She turned over her palm and gave his hand a squeeze. “If we can get your trouble sorted, I promise you won’t be able to chase us off before dinner and drinks.”

Aramis Stilton seemed pleased to hear it. “Which brings us back to business. What is it you intend to help me with?”

Billie turned to her nameless friend. Cryptic or not, he was going to be better at explaining this than she was.

Black sipped at the brandy the butler had poured them. He seemed sceptical of it and set it back on the tray. “You have nightmares. You’ve been having them for the last three years. Sometimes it takes a while for you feel lucid again when you wake. You’ve seen doctors, but none of the drugs they bring you ever help.”

Stilton gave him an intense stare, heavy eyebrows drawn downward. “Who told you this? Are you here to sell me more snake oil?”

Black seemed unphased by Stilton’s scepticism. “Then there’s the way the door to your office goes missing sometimes. Or your servants get lost on the way there, no matter how long they’ve worked in your household. You wouldn’t believe them, except it’s happened to you yourself.”

Stilton turned to Billie, his scepticism fading to a sort of bewilderment. “Who is this young man?”

Billie frowned. “He’s… There’s not really a word for him. Let’s just say he’s an expert.”

“But I assume what you’re suggesting is these things are _related_ somehow?” Stilton asked.

Black nodded once. “These things and other things, the rumored haunting of your study, the way sometimes your gardeners hear bloodflies when none can be found. All of it stems from a single source. The Void is bleeding into our world from the place Delilah Copperspoon tore it open three years ago. Billie and I are here to stanch the flow.”

“Are you some kind of _witch_ , young Mr. Black? Meag- Billie, I’ve never known you to dabble in such things. I’m no friend to the Abbey, but I’m at a loss. How do you know all of this, and how are you so certain you can fix it?”

Billie frowned for a moment. She realized just why Black was so cryptic about these things. If he wasn’t he’d find himself giving hour-long lectures every time he tried to talk to someone. She reached out to Stilton, not with her left hand, but her right. “It’s impossible to explain it, so I’m going to show you.”

She looked into him with the Eye. Her spirit pressed forward, pushed its way under her old friend’s skin. She saw a roiling anxiety in him; fear of the illness he felt encroaching on his mind, the fear not only of being consumed by it, but not knowing how much he could even trust his own perceptions. When it finally happened, would he even know? Under that, the fear that it was only a sign of things to come. Fear of old age, fear of death, all of them kept locked under a determination to build a legacy that would keep the miners safe when he was gone. 

She could feel loneliness, too, and a wistfulness towards her nameless friend, so much like the beautiful men of his youth. There could be nothing between them, but he could treat him well for the evening, show what measure of affection a gracious host could. That would be a pleasure in itself.

It didn’t surprise her, entirely, just how much of this was hidden under the surface, how calm and steady he managed to be in spite of it all. The way he focused on whatever there was to be done, and found satisfaction in that.

At last, she saw herself through his eyes. Thoughtful, secretive, determined but not unscathed. Compassionate, clever, practical. He trusted her. None of what he had said had been a lie.

She taught his eyes to see her arm, and she withdrew. He stared down at her strange hand in perplexity, then sympathy.

“My friend, how did you become so scarred? That stone upon your face, and then this…”

“The tear that’s effecting this place… it carved a gash across my own life. It wounded your mind, and my body. What’s happened to me is as healed as it’s gonna get, but for you, I think we can do more.”

Stilton accompanied them when they went to the study upstairs, in spite of reassurances that he could wait while they took care of the problem themselves.

“No one enters these rooms any more, not even myself,” Stilton grumbled. “Especially myself.”

He unlocked the door and swung it open. Billie gasped. The entirety of the room beyond flickered and twitched and shimmered with the Void. Even Black took a step back from it, his hand on Stilton’s elbow to guide him to do the same.

“Can _you_ see it?” she asked him.

Her nameless friend shook his head. “I can feel it.”

Billie could see the kind of effort it took to make himself step closer. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I said that I would guide you. I will.” He crossed the threshold, looking as intense as he ever had when he’d appeared before her as the god of the Void.

He exhaled heavily. He wasn’t happy about being here, Billie could tell, but he was centered. He would bear it.

“They performed the seance in the room below. Aramis Stilton, you shouldn’t venture past this threshold. Please wait for us here.”

“I don’t know whether to curse myself for being suggestible but this place makes me shudder. Go with care. Do what needs to be done.”

Black shut the door behind them. The room was flickering so badly Billie’s head swam. She squinted hard, focused through the Eye, and she saw more clearly, multiple possibilities layered upon one another, superimposed. This place was badly tangled up. It was only the Outsider’s ‘gifts’ that kept her on her feet and free from agonizing pain, she was certain. The hand at her side twitched and spasmed, though.

Her friend led her through the room to the stairs that lead into the more spacious library. The tear was there waiting for them, and Billie touched Black’s shoulder to stop him at the bottom step. “It’s right there in the middle of the room,” she said. “It’s not good. Feels like the Quarry.”

Black nodded to her. “Only weeks ago, Emily Kaldwin came here to peer through this crack in the world and see Delilah’s return for herself. But even as I gave her the means to do it, when she reached this room, she could only watch. Delilah manipulated the Void here and the fabric of reality in tandem. Her return to the world made a stitch through both; it is immutable, for all the good it does her. But there are things around it you can change. Things you alone can do, to let this heal.”

“What should I look for? Will this be the same as last time?”

“This is Aramis Stilton’s home. He is it’s heart. The fate of this place is tied up in his fate; his prosperity, or his downfall.”

“I’m going to save him from whatever it is that’s eating away at his mind.”

Black gave her a small twitch of a smile, and for a moment his face looked profoundly gentle. “I believe you will, Billie.”

Billie reached out for the tear, sparkling there in the center of the room.

He had been right about there being some kind of “stitch” in place. She was immediately there, watching the seance, Delilah’s cronies gathered around her. Duke Luca Abele, Breanna Ashworth, the twisted thing they’d made out of Doctor Hypatia, Kirin Jindosh… and Aramis Stilton, somehow both there and not there, flickering.

His eyes were wide and wild, and when she looked at him the Eye could see the spiderweb of cracks spreading out over his mind. He was the heart of this place, maybe in a sense even more literal than she had thought her nameless friend had meant. The horrible pressure that was piercing the world was piercing Stilton just as much.

But there was another reality where he wasn’t there. Billie looked and she saw him in the gazebo in his backyard. She saw Emily Kaldwin laying him down upon a divan as the drug in her sleeping dart took hold. She drew a crocheted blanket over him, and laid his journal open on his chest after looking at some page within it.

Billie wanted to kiss the Empress’s cheek in that moment. She was certain Emily had known just what she was doing, just how much suffering she was sparing this man. When Billie glanced forward she could see the shadows of a future where Stilton lost his mind, kept in confinement while the mansion around him fell to squalor. It was only Emily’s intervention that had made another path possible.

Now was the time to confirm that choice.

Billie crossed the room to where Stilton shrank away from the tear, and she stood behind him. She took her right hand and closed Stilton’s eyes with her fingers, gentle. She pulled him back into her arms, eased him down.

The threads of possibility tangled up around them snapped and gave way, as if her kindness in that moment had melted them into cobwebs, as if the weight of the life she held against her chest was the weight of a mountain. Stilton fell all the way back to that couch in his Gazebo, sleeping soundly.

Billie kept falling. But this time she felt like she was floating, maybe even soaring. “I saved him!” She thought. He was never at the seance. The slow flood of the Void that had kept that pinprick open and growing was stanched at the source. The wound closed neatly and healed after Delilah’s deed was done.

There was light around her, light beneath her. She could hear something, almost, just at the edge of understanding, just as when Daud had whispered in the Outsider’s ear. Then there was something more.

_“... but like the white wings of a gull, a new one opens in its wake. Corvo, I am alive. Soon we will see each other by the light of day and even I, who have seen so much, don’t yet know what it will mean. Love is as mortal as we are, as common as dirt. And now, somehow, after an eternity alone, I am filthy with it.”_

And she heard him laugh. Not only heard, she felt it. Breathless, full of wonder, full of joy he must have felt helpless to do anything with but feel thankful for.

But why?

She had freed him from the Void and led him out of it. Why was it still ringing with his voice? With his thoughts, his hopes, his fears and his dreams and his _love?_

When she returned to herself she was staring at him with her heart in her eyes. There was only pure confusion in his.

“What did you--”

Billie pulled him in tight and hugged him until he grunted and tried to push away. 

“Billie. Please.”

She let him go. “You were right. Everything is changing.”

He tilted his head, bewildered. For once he didn’t understand something, and Billie wondered if he was enjoying the novelty of the experience. Around them, the room was still. It was only a room again, quiet and a little dusty.

Billie stepped past him, a smile on her face that threatened to split into a grin. This was a good day. This was a victory. “Come on. Dinnertime.”


	24. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fastest ship arrives in Karnaca.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Take [this boat](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/13/article-0-1A448469000005DC-386_964x368.jpg), paint it white, and shake a few DH concept artists at it and you've got the Kestrel.

Valentino invited the whole group of them to the Blackfish the next morning. It was early for them, but the promise of espresso and the free pick of anything they liked from the pastry case made it worthwhile. Billie, Reese, Valentino, and their nameless friend took the ferry across the bay at daybreak, the mist still cloaking the sea. 

Black was quiet, looking out over the water, feeling untroubled for the moment. The group of them stayed together on the upper deck while most of the other passengers were inside the cabin below. Reese was leaning back in Billie’s arms, working on her knitting while the two of them shared one of the ferry’s coarse woollen blankets. On the bench across from them, Valentino was calmly reading the morning paper, even though the mist took the crispness out of the pages and made them trickier to fold.

“Saw in the papers yesterday, they’ve been talking about re-opening Addermire,” Reese said. “Doctor Hypatia had some huge grant come through from the Academy of Natural Philosophy. They said the Empress wrote a letter of commendation.”

“They’re going to need nurses,” said Billie, “once the repairs are done. I heard that place was practically derelict.”

“They’ve been working on it. But they should be able to pick up the pace, now. I’m keeping an eye open to see when they start hiring.”

“Think you’ll give up the shop?”

“Probably, yeah. Been looking to get out of that game for awhile.”

Black saw Billie’s arms tighten around Reese. Both women were smiling.

He felt immensely satisfied with that.

By the time they reached the Palace District’s dock, the mist was burning away and the sky was clear and blue. They disembarked together, climbing the hill up to the cafe where Valentino unlocked the doors and set to work readying the shop for the day. They chose seats on the balcony as the brightening sky was so inviting.

“So there he was,” Billie said as they sat down. “Skimming the bowl for some whipped cream and sucking it off his finger, right in front of Aramis like he had no idea..!”

Reese cupped her hands over her mouth, squealing with laughter as Billie related the story. 

Black voiced a heavy sigh as he sat back on a rattan couch. Aramis Stilton had introduced him to something called a Caulkenny Coffee during their visit to his manor. He hadn’t expected coffee and whiskey to taste that good together. “He didn’t complain,” Black pointed out.

“He looked at you like you were a blood ox steak being served up on a silver plate. If you’d had the least bit of awareness, it would’ve been cruel.” Billie was shaking her head and grinning.

“I didn’t! I truly didn’t--”

Reese was laughing out loud. “No, no, the only thing on your mind was ‘Mmm! Some whipped cream! Don’t mind if I do!’”

Billie had her arm across her belly, shaking with laughter she didn’t entirely give voice to. “Like while we were getting acquainted with Valentino and he had all that rum? You _know_ he was just ‘Ah, I feel warm and sleepy’ and there he is with bedroom eyes and the top three buttons of his shirt undone and it’s just… no one in the room can make eye contact with him anymore…”

Reese was nearly sobbing with laughter.

Black had his face in both hands to try and cover his blush. Some part of him speculated that he should be angry as their teasing stepped a bit over the line, but the rest of him rejected the idea. They weren’t trying to shame him, really, and it _was_ funny. To them. “I didn’t _mean_ to be provocative, I just… was warm. And sleepy.”

“I’m sorry we have to be the ones to tell you, dear Mister Black. You are _obliviously sensual._ ” Valentino set down cups of hot coffee with frothed milk for each of them. He at least made an effort to try and suppress the grin on his face. “The worst case I think I’ve ever seen.”

“The oblivious part, or the sensual?” asked Billie.

“ _Both,_ ” Reese and Valentino said in unison.

“I will never be able to take my hands off of my face,” said the nameless man.

“I hate to say, the world might be safer that way,” Reese said.

“We need the Royal Protector now more than ever,” Valentino opined.

The teasing let up after that, both Billie and Reese rubbing his back to smooth down any ruffled feathers and reassure him that anything they said had been meant in fondness. He pieced his dignity back together and sampled the scones Valentino brought out for them a few minutes later after the bakery delivery arrived.

“--Still don’t know what he said to him then,” Billie said, as she was wrapping up her story of their visit with Aramis Stilton. “But Aramis seemed happy with it. He said you were ‘complex’,” she said to her nameless friend. “I told him he didn’t know the half of it.”

Black shrugged. “In what way, though?”

“He said you’re both intense and gentle at the same time and he couldn’t really figure out how it worked.”

He looked contemplative. “I think I’d rather be that than obliviously sensual.”

He looked out over the balustrade then, out at the bay. The sky was clear and the winds were putting whitecaps on the water. A beautiful white ship was gliding in fast, a trimaran as long and slim as a stiletto, its wake spreading out behind it.

“What kind of ship is that?” Reese asked. “It’s gorgeous.”

“Fast, too. Wait, is that the _Kestrel?_ I’ve only seen silvergraphs but I don’t think they made another one like--”

Black was already out of his chair, running for the door.

It was the Kestrel. It was exactly as Corvo had told him. He had meant it literally.

The fastest ship.

He nearly bowled over a couple people climbing the building stairs as he rushed out the front doors. He knew the way back to the docks, and he weaved between pedestrians and porters to make his way down the tiered streets. He rounded a corner, breathless, and looked down to see the Kestrel, white and shining, docked at the end of the pier.

By the time he reached it, there was already a red-coated officer of the Guard stationed there. She stepped forward to block his progress.

“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” The guardswoman said while the nameless man did his best to catch his breath.

“Where is Corvo Attano?” 

The guard blinked, then narrowed her eyes at him slightly. “How should I know? The papers say he’s on the ISS Jessamine, en route to here.”

“He’s here. He came in on this ship. Is he still aboard?”

The guardswoman’s face turned serious. “You’re going to need to state your name and your business here.”

“My business here is with the Lord Protector.”

“Then you’ll be waiting a while.”

“I’ll never understand why people think the answer to being caught in a lie is to _lie harder_.”

“Excuse me!” The guard glowered at him. But then she ventured, “What makes you so damned certain I’m lying?”

“This is Wyman Rourke’s ship. Where is he? What business does he have in Karnaca?”

The guard looked back over her shoulder for a moment. “That’s still no business of yours. I need to ask you to move along.”

“No. I need to see Corvo. Bring him out. I’ll wait.”

“I keep telling you, he isn’t here! Don’t make me draw on you!”

“I keep telling you I know you’re lying.” His voice remained level but his eyes grew sharp.

The guardswoman chewed her lip. She glanced around; no one was here for her to be accountable to. No one was watching.

“Alright, look. If for some reason Corvo Attano came in on this ship because something was so ridiculously important he had to get to Karnaca very, very fast… whatever was that important would probably mean he’d have debarked the ship right away, right? Just… hypothetically.”

He’d kept his cool for that long, but he looked stricken at the news. Or the conjecture, if they were playing that game. “If Corvo Attano were to return to this ship, which may or may not have brought him here from Dunwall… he would want to know I had come calling.”

“For that to hypothetically happen, you’d need to tell me your name.”

He sighed, utterly crestfallen. “Tell him he’ll know it soon. That would be enough.”

He could still picture the guard’s perplexed expression as he walked back down the pier. He was certain that somewhere in Karnaca, a man wearing a mask like a steel death’s head was stalking the shadows.


	25. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lights are on in the shuttered Spector club. An invitation Billie Lurk can't pass up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not trying to say that everything is resolved here. But they've at least stated their intentions.

It was an uneasy night for Billie Lurk. After Black had gone running out of the cafe that morning, she’d pieced together the reason why. He’d confirmed it when he’d returned to them not long after. He hadn’t met with Corvo, but he was adamantly certain he’d been on that ship. Not that Billie needed much convincing. There were no coincidences, not in Dunwall as Daud had said, and not in Karnaca.

She still had work to do, but she spent the night looking over her shoulder, just waiting for something to go wrong. Anything could turn out to be a trap.

What she found wasn’t a trap, in the end, but a foreboding invitation. Running rooftops in the Cyria district, Billie saw lights on in what had been the Spector Club. It had been closed since she’d swept the place weeks ago. If anybody had even been left to run the shop, Shan Yun’s house next door had been cordoned off by the Grand Guard to investigate his murder. That much attention from the Guard would’ve been plenty of reason to shutter the place on its own.

But the lights were on on every floor, even though the doors and windows were still boarded shut.

Billie found a way onto the rooftop without much trouble. From there, she slipped through a vent with a broken fan, and found the maintenance door open just a sliver. She sent her spirit on ahead of her. Trap or invitation, she wasn’t going to be caught unawares.

Down below in the taproom, a large, lean man was playing darts. What Billie saw under his skin hurt to look at.

Something across his heart, spectral and pale, bleeding at the edges with bright red anguish. That red dripped through him, turned to roiling fog of black, but just when it seemed like it would smother every other hue of his spirit, it dissipated in a pulse of sorrow. 

It could only be one person. Billie had helped give him that scar. She snapped back to her body, head spinning, face tight with bitter regret.

Now was the time. She felt sick to her stomach. What remained would be settled between them, face to face.

Billie knocked on the doorframe of the taproom when she reached it. The man who turned to her was wearing a steel mask.

“I’ve only ever seen that face on posters. I counted myself lucky for that.”

Corvo Attano slid the mask off his face and looked back at her with eyes that hadn’t seen sleep in days. “Billie Lurk.” He greeted her without a smile, and walked around the bar. He pulled two glasses from under the counter, one bottle of Old Dunwall from the wall, and he poured for both of them. “Drinks are on the house.”

Billie perched on a bar stool, not taking her eyes off the man. “I know you’re not here to exchange pleasantries. Cut to the chase, Royal Protector.”

“I’m not here to draw on you, either. Drink up.” Corvo tossed back his whiskey by way of demonstration, and immediately poured himself another.

Billie kept her wary eye on him, but she drank. He came around the bar again, took a stool for himself a few seats away from her. A polite distance.

“How is he?” He asked.

“He knows you’re in Karnaca. He’s frantic. Why are you stalling?”

He looked surprised by that. Maybe a little guilty, too. “When I meet him, I want him to know this isn’t hanging over your head. I want to bury this. It’s time.”

Billie looked at him, no longer disbelieving. “You think we can?”

“We’ll carry the scars. That won’t change. But we can stop reopening the wounds. I’ve bled enough. So have you, I’d bet.”

“But why? Because of what I did for him?”

“There’s more to it than that.” The shadows on his face were deep from the lamplight above them. His voice was rough and low, more so than Daud’s had been. And when she glimpsed his eyes in the shadows under his heavy brows, they had a blistering intensity. He reached across the counter, added more whiskey to his glass.

“This,” he said, tapping his steel mask, “was a gift he gave me, fifteen years ago. A man named Piero Joplin made it, but Joplin told me later in a drunken stupor, that it was the Outsider working through him. There were two other gifts, besides the Mark. He gave me my sword, which I still carry, and he gave me a piece of Jessamine’s spirit, carried in her dead heart.

“It was a thing of the Void, then, but I could see it, hold it in my hand. I could hear the whispers of her insight, telling me the secrets of the people around me. I could hear her regrets, her broken hopes, and I listened to her grieve the life we could have had together.” He drank again, not sipping, just tossing back another glass, needing the liquor more than the taste. 

“I could see the gash she’d bled out of, haphazardly stitched back together, sealing it enough to hold her voice. Even those crooked stitches just echoed back what I knew whenever I looked at it. However fucking strong and fast and smart I was, nothing I did would ever undo that.”

Billie couldn’t even look at him. She could see a younger man, shouting out, struggling, all panic and desperation. She could even feel the force of him through the power she’d used to hold him back. She could see hope go out in his eyes in a fraction of a second. “I know,” she said. “I know.”

“Emily never told me about Billie Lurk. She told me she’d had a ship’s captain, Meagan Foster, helping her every step of the way during the Coup. It was _his_ letter that told me who Meagan Foster really was. That told me something else, too. It told me Emily had made up her mind. She forgave you in the end. She didn’t want to risk that I might not.”

“We didn’t exactly part fondly. But even after getting to know your daughter, I’d expected a lot worse.”

“She needed time. It takes time to pick apart that knot. That’s what I’m trying to do. I had a week at sea to do my thinking. Now it’s time to talk.”

Did it make things even worse, Billie asked herself, that she could feel herself beginning to like this man? When she managed to look at him again, she found him looking back at her with those sharp-seeming eyes.

“Before I left Dunwall, I asked Emily what her mother thought of you. If she’d asked, what had the Heart told her? Would you believe… she was fond of you.”

Billie was stunned. She couldn’t keep it from showing on her face.

“All the way here I kept thinking about what he told me about you. What your life was like, what circumstances brought you to that day. It’s still hard to say how it feels, knowing that if I’d walked in your shoes, I probably would’ve done the same.” 

When he drank again, it was just a slow sip. Some of the heavy lines of anguish in his face had eased. “Which brings us to this. If Jessamine forgave you long ago… if my daughter forgave you… if someone I care about calls you his _savior_... I can try to put this down. It feels strange. I’m used to that anger being there, like a Krust with a pearl.”

Billie picked up her neglected drink. As he’d purged himself of something dark, somehow she felt like she’d done the same. “I know you’ll never forget what I’ve done. Neither will I.”

He was watching her while she drank, thinking. They spent a long moment in silence together before he spoke on another subject. “You know him better than I do, by now.”

“Ask me whatever you want,” Billie said with a tentative, slanted smile. “I’ll spill.”

“He’s really saving his name for me?”

“He is. He’s been completely stubborn about it. We all just call him--”

“Black. I met with Bianchi a little before sundown. He told me you’ve been under the same roof for a few weeks.”

“He’d been through so much it felt wrong to just cut him loose. I figured I’d give him time to get his legs under him, but…” Billie winced and shook her head. “The Abbey got him when they raided Battista. They had him for about eight hours. He was in a pretty bad way after that.”

Billie heard the Royal Protector’s whiskey glass crack in his hand.

“You didn’t know?”

“That part of the report was vague.”

“Don’t take it out on Valentino, it was before he got into the mix.”

“I have a pretty good idea who I’m going to take it out on,” Corvo growled.

“I didn’t exactly take prisoners, myself.”

It was grim, but Corvo actually smiled at her. 

“But how is he now? Recovered?”

“He’s better. I guess it makes sense given how long he’s been around, but he’s a lot tougher than he looks.”

“I believe it.” Corvo sipped from his glass, his features softened by a moment of wistfulness. “You got him through, not just once, but twice. I’m almost stupid enough to be jealous.”

“Don’t be. He talks about you sometimes and the look on his face… What you gave him, what you were to him, he needed just as much.” Billie looked down into her glass. “I’ve been sweating bullets for days over this, but for his sake, I’m glad you’re here.”

“Half the trip I’ve been asking myself what I can even offer him. To the rest of the world I’m twice his age. I’ll be in my grave before he’s even gone grey. He’s been imprisoned for centuries, he should get a chance to know what freedom is like before somebody chains him down.”

“Do _not_ let him hear you say that.” Billie’s tone turned deadly serious.

Corvo gave her a questioning look.

“If you want to know what he needs, it’s not that. It’s not you coming all the way down here just to cut him loose. What he needs is a home and people who care about him, and he needs it to feel solid as a rock because I can see in his face the times he thinks it’s all going to fucking disappear. More than that, he needs you to let him tell you himself. Don’t just make guesses for him.”

Corvo regarded her. He scratched at his jaw. Then, slowly, he nodded. “You got attached,” he observed.

Billie snorted. “He’s weirdly endearing. Completely earnest about everything. And he does dishes.”

Corvo looked like he was fighting back a grin. “The Outsider does dishes?”

“He says it makes him feel like a normal person. That’s what he wants. Just... a life.”

Corvo finished his glass again, but this time he pushed it away. “I need to see him. Now’s the time. Anything else I should know?”

Billie shrugged and slipped off her stool, straightened her jacket. “I’ll tell you on the way.”


	26. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corvo Attano reunites with his lover and learns his name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> merr chrimby naughty children.
> 
> WARNINGS: Explicit. Very. Minor blood.

The nameless man knew he wasn’t going to sleep that night. He’d known it that morning, walking away from the Palace District’s docks. Knowing Corvo was in Karnaca was like having an itch he couldn’t scratch. If he’d missed him over the past weeks, if he’d thought of him and longed for him, it had come to the point where thoughts of Corvo drowned out everything else.

All the others had something else to occupy them. Billie was taking jobs. Reese was manning the shop. Valentino played fiddle in an Aventa District pub several nights out of the week. So the nameless man stayed in the attic apartment alone, every light on like a beacon.

He was pacing. He couldn’t focus on anything for long. He’d done every chore he could think of. Suddenly worried about his appearance, he’d bathed, brushed his teeth, even forced himself to shave. He’d borrowed Valentino’s pomade. He’d changed clothes three times and he refused to think about what that might say about him as a person. 

He’d tried asking himself what he would do when he saw Corvo at last. No matter how much time he spent trying, he couldn’t answer that question. He wouldn’t be able to until it happened.

Was it frustrating or was it exhilarating, not to know the future anymore? It was in the instant he heard a tap at the kitchen window that he knew which.

Another tap followed it. Then another. 

Pebbles at his windowpane.

Sometimes the future was better than anything imagination could conjure. Sometimes surprises were the world being the best it had ever been. His fingers fumbled with the latch as he threw the window open. A shadow from the roof of the building across the alley crossed that space like it was nothing, too silent for its size, and lunged through into the light.

A steel mask came away and everything he knew narrowed down to the scrape of a coarse, short beard on his face, the touch of firm, dry lips, and a gravelly murmur of “There you are.”

His breath hitched. His head was spinning. The room pitched sideways.

The next thing he was aware of was a familiar face looking down at him in concern, a calloused hand brushing his hair back from his forehead. He was on the sofa, his head in Corvo’s lap.

“Corvo…”

“You fainted.”

“Fainted.” He covered his face with one hand, giving a weak laugh. “At least I didn’t _weep_.”

“There’s still time for that,” Corvo said with a telling catch in his own voice.

“Don’t,” he whispered, taking hold of the hand on his hair. “No more pain.”

“It isn’t pain. Void, you’re _smiling._ Your eyes are deeper than a forest.”

He squoze that hand tight. “Poetry already, are you trying to kill me?”

“Trying to keep you.”

He sat up, his hand on Corvo’s face. He traced a heavy eyebrow with the tips of his fingers, the curve of his upper lip with the pad of his thumb. “You have me.”

“Tell me your name, love.”

He looked into Corvo’s eyes, digging that name out of the vault in his heart where he’d kept it, swathed in the promise he’d given like a sacred relic. Now, when he wore his name again, he would wear a promise of love fulfilled. By this, he reclaimed himself. By this, he was sanctified, cleansed of the profanity done to him. The old rituals were done and dead. This was a new one he’d created, not even knowing it when he began.

“My name is Isaac.”

Corvo’s eyes lit with it, his lips parted. He let it alight in him like a fledgling bird.

“Please…” Isaac said, his voice hoarse and quiet. “I want to hear you say it.”

“Isaac.”

He shivered with it, gasped. It felt like being touched. It felt like Corvo’s hand along his spine, like his lips on his neck, like the words “I love you” whispered in his ear, and he realized he was trembling. He realized there were arms around him, and he was warm, he was gasping for breath between sobs. Corvo’s lips were against the rim of his ear, murmuring it to him again, and Void, he was gentle with it. The ‘s’ was always soft and unvoiced, a light caress. What others had stolen and destroyed, he kept, he cradled like a precious thing.

“Just hold onto me, Isaac. Hold onto me. Breathe, love, I have you.”

He did. He clung to Corvo, fists in his coat. Corvo’s embrace turned fiercely strong, his arms like iron around him. As much as his face was buried in Corvo’s shoulder, Corvo had his face pressed into the side of his neck, and he was trembling, too.

He wasn’t the only one who’d been starved for this warmth.

They calmed as the minutes passed. The first fires burned lower, and Isaac felt a sort of contentment that was deep enough he thought it should deserve a better word. It was like the goal every heart seeks and few ever find. With Corvo’s body against him, the rhythm of his breathing pulling his own into step with it, he could feel himself resting there.

“I’m as poor a host as ever,” he murmured. “I might have at least taken your coat before I fell into a swoon.”

That earned him a soft chuckle and less soft kiss. Corvo pulled away slowly, and they both rose up off the couch. Corvo pulled off his coat, heavy and dark and more suited to Dunwall winters, and Isaac hung it for him on a hook by the door.

“I spoke to Billie Lurk,” Corvo said, looking for ways to fill the silence. “She said she’s staying with a friend tonight. She thought we could use some time alone.”

Isaac felt some heat on his cheekbones at what that implied. From the look of fascination on Corvo’s face, the blush showed. Corvo closed the distance between them, scant that it was, his hands at the small of Isaac’s back. 

“That can happen or not,” Corvo said. “Your choice. Your pace. What I want…” Corvo paused, choosing his words. “Until recently, my whole life has been an open book to you. But you… I am so _hungry_ to know you better.”

“My offer still stands, and always will,” Isaac said. “Ask me anything, and I will answer. But I’ll tell you something first. I’m still learning many things myself -- the kind of man that I am, and could be. The way I’m shaped by the people around me just as you said to me the night we parted, like vines trained along an arbor. Know that I’m choosing you to be the one closest to me. I am choosing the shape I’ll take, moulded by your hands. There is knowledge I can try to give you in words, but there’s more in living side by side. Everything you want will come to you in time.”

Corvo never took his eyes off him. When Isaac reached to touch the side of his face, Corvo turned his head, kissed his fingers. He took his hand, kissed the inside of his wrist. Isaac wondered if Corvo could feel his pulse beating there. 

He wanted to kiss him and barely knew how. When he rose up and leaned in, Corvo met his lips. Their teeth clicked against each other’s and Isaac drew back, only for Corvo to bring a hand to the back of his head and gently guide him. It helped. The longer that kiss lasted, the more his body had its own ideas. His lips parted for Corvo’s tongue as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Then his tongue moved against the one slipping into his mouth, coaxing and caressing, warm and wet. 

He thought he’d lose his footing for the second time that night. His knees felt loose, about to buckle under him, and he leaned a little more against Corvo for support. He felt something in their kiss, Corvo’s lips quirking with a smile in spite of how occupied his mouth was, and he realized Corvo could feel his erection pressing up against him. When Corvo pushed against the small of his back, pressed forward with his own hips, Isaac moaned into their kiss and finally broke it, panting.

“Bed me,” said Isaac. “Now. Please.”

“Of course.” Corvo leaned in closer, his beard scraping against the side of Isaac’s neck. “Where?” 

Corvo’s lips tugged at his earlobe. Isaac gasped, loud, startled. He hadn’t known that his ears could be that sensitive. “End of the hall.”

When Corvo pulled away from him, the sound Isaac made was so bereft that Corvo lunged back to him again, planting another firm kiss at the corner of his mouth.

They put out the lights, pulling chains for the ceiling lamps, blowing out candles on the windowsills. Then Isaac led the way back to his bed, feeling equal parts eager and uncertain.

Even in dreams he’d let Corvo lead. With little experience or instinct to guide him, it had made sense. When he turned back to Corvo, Isaac saw him looking at him thoughtfully, piecing something together before he guided Isaac to the bed. 

“You’re so much _more_ now,” Corvo murmured, sitting on the edge of the bed and drawing Isaac down into his lap. “Warmer, more _feeling_...”

“Is the change too much?”

“No. I like seeing you like this. I like knowing I can please you.”

“I don’t think I provide much of a challenge.”

“If I need a challenge, we can play cards.” 

Corvo kissed him under his chin and Isaac felt another small thrill go through him. He could melt into Corvo’s lap, given half the chance. This time, when he kissed him, he had more skill about it, leaning in slowly, lips closing over Corvo’s lower lip and softly tugging. Corvo followed his careful pace and they savored one another.

Then Isaac began to indulge himself. He broke their kiss to brush his lips along the edge of Corvo’s jaw. Then he moved just past the roughness of his beard, kissed and carefully sucked the skin below his ear, past the corner of his jaw. His kiss moved lower, following the thick muscle that ran from ear to throat. This time, he heard Corvo draw a quiet, quavering breath. Isaac thumbed open the top buttons of his shirt.

The instinct he’d lacked in the Void, Isaac found more than enough of in the moment. His lips were in love with the skin under them, his tongue with the subtle salt he tasted on it, and soon his hands were pushing Corvo back, down into his bed. It was a small single bed, a creaking iron frame with a mattress a little past its prime, but it had been enough. It would last them the night.

The only space Isaac left between them was what he needed for his hands to keep opening the buttons on Corvo’s clothing. He opened Corvo’s waistcoat and his shirt, pulling it free of his pants to push it back, expose his chest and stomach. Corvo’s body had none of the softness of many other men his age. He was lean, the muscles of his body defined, sinuous. His hair was densest at the center of his chest, a thick line of it following the centerline of his torso. Isaac brushed against it with his knuckles just below the navel, and Corvo’s hands seized him by the shoulders. 

There was just enough room on the bed for Corvo to roll him onto his back, his own body poised over Isaac, his gaze fierce and full of heat. “You are not going to rob me of the chance to see you come undone,” he growled. Then his mouth was on Isaac’s neck again, his thigh between Isaac’s legs, hips grinding forward, grinding down. 

When Isaac’s body arched beneath him, Corvo pressed him back down with the weight of his own, smothered his quiet moan with his own mouth. They kissed with Isaac squirming, hips rolling slowly to rub himself against the man on top of him. He couldn’t help himself. Desire came not only with its own inspirations, but its own demands.

When the kiss broke, Isaac was looking up at Corvo with a haze of pleasure and need in his eyes. His lips were flushed and wet, kiss-swollen and slightly parted. His black hair mussed, brushed back from his face. Corvo unbuttoned Isaac’s shirt slowly, pausing to slip his hand under the cloth and caress him. That was when Isaac realized it was still wrapped. He held Corvo’s wrist to make him pause. “Why…?” was all Isaac could manage.

“It hurt to look at.” The echo of grief was there in Corvo’s eyes. 

Isaac began unbuttoning his shirt where Corvo had left off. He locked gazes with his lover. “Undress. I will mark you wherever you want me to.” 

Corvo shrugged off his shirt and vest. He watched Isaac shed his own shirt, but he intervened when he reached for his belt. Isaac’s belt, his pants, Corvo unfastened for him, slid them down his hips. Corvo watched his cock pull free of his underclothes, and it took a moment for Isaac to understand the puzzled look on his face, the careful way he took it in hand.

“I’ve heard some places in Tyvia do this…” His thumb brushed the pale scar below the flare of Isaac’s head.

Sensation was faintly muted there, yet still enough to make him squirm. Isaac caught his breath, unable to take his eyes off Corvo’s hand on him. He had forgotten circumcision wasn’t common practice anymore, hadn’t been for centuries. “When I was born it wasn’t unusual. It was done when I was too young to remember.”

Precum welled up in his slit and Corvo caught it with a calloused thumb. Isaac stifled a moan in his throat. “ _Please_...”

For a moment he saw a glimmer of mischief in Corvo’s eyes, the temptation to take him further. But Corvo pulled his hand away instead to unbuckle his own boots. Isaac pushed his pants off the rest of the way, kicked them to the foot of the bed. 

Corvo was gorgeous in the nude, even with all his scars. Some from blades or broken bottles, here and there the pucker of a bullet wound. On his arms, his flanks, parallel lines of faded burns: the torturer’s irons from Coldridge Prison.

Those hurt to look at.

It must have shown on his face, because Corvo leaned over him again, lips on his temple, weight of his body urging him to lie back once more. He gave into it. He couldn’t change the past, but he could make these moments sweet.

He felt Corvo’s cock against the crease of his inner thigh, so close to his own erection, thick and hotter than a fever. His hands wandered Corvo’s shoulders and back, feeling the subtle ridges of scars under his palms. Then they settled instead in his hair. For all that the man with him was hard, scarred, and grizzled, the loose waves of his hair were unimaginably soft. Isaac sighed as his fingers carded through it, enraptured and tender. Corvo answered it with kisses along the rim of his ear.

Isaac bent his knees, hugged Corvo’s hips with his thighs, and he could feel Corvo’s cock twitch hard against him. He reached down to try and guide him in, but Corvo pulled back. 

“No,” Corvo murmured. He gently pushed away Isaac’s hand.

“I need you--”

“That isn’t something you can rush. I’ll give you what you want, but not tonight.”

When Corvo kissed his lower lip, Isaac realized he was pouting. Corvo settled back into place, this time with his shaft alongside Isaac’s. He gave a long, slow roll of his hips, a slight shift of adjustment, and then their cocks were pressed together hard, trapped between their bodies.

“Don’t worry,” Corvo murmured. “I’ll bring you there.” 

Isaac knew Corvo could read the plea in his eyes as his hand brushed back his hair. He felt Corvo’s hips bearing down on him as his own rocked and squirmed beneath. Their shafts stroked against each other, his tip leaking onto his belly. The pleasure was indirect, just barely enough. It kept him moving, kept him building, kept the puddle of precum spreading on his abdomen, Corvo’s joining his own.

Isaac surrendered to it utterly. He stopped trying to quiet the sounds in his throat, the panting, the hungry moans. The color in his lips and cheeks deepened and spread. “Is this what you wanted?” He whispered up at Corvo. “I am desperate for you, rutting under you, I can feel you slip against me, I can’t stop…”

Corvo’s own breath hitched. Their shafts were slick, and Corvo’s hips pressed down harder to keep them belly to belly. Isaac could move less and less, growing frantic for contact, for friction, something to bring him past the edge.

“Mark me there,” Corvo breathed in his ear, Isaac’s mouth against his shoulder.

Isaac bit down on him. He didn’t break the skin, even in his frenzy, but it was hard enough to bruise.

Corvo’s ecstatic moan was sharp with pain. His hand reached between their bodies and Isaac could feel both their shafts in Corvo’s grip. 

“Isaac, _please_...” Corvo’s desperation was as great as his own. There was sweat on his back where Isaac clung to him. Isaac tensed his hands, fingers digging in, then nails. 

Corvo groaned out loud, arched his back into that pain. “More,” he whispered hoarsely.

Isaac raked him with his nails. “Tell me you want a scar. Tell me you want this.” 

Corvo was thrusting into his own grip. His fingers would slide, catch against the ridges of their cockheads and Isaac could feel something coiling tight within him. He was at the brink, his writhing body about to buckle and spill his pleasure out.

“I want it. Give me this.”

With the first spasm of his own climax, Isaac bit down again. This time he bit until he could taste blood in his mouth, and in the moment his teeth broke skin, Corvo cried out. He felt Corvo’s shaft throbbing against his, Corvo’s climax following.

They pulsed together like the chambers of a heart. Isaac could feel a warm flood of their cum across his stomach as his head dropped back to the bed, traces of blood on his lips. He still held onto Corvo as his thrusts turned to a slow roll of hips and shoulders. A quiet shudder and the body on him was still again, Corvo’s weight resting on Isaac, his flushed face buried in the crook of Isaac’s neck. 

They breathed together for a while. Isaac’s thoughts were diffuse, the world around him warm. That feeling of contentment beyond contentment was with him again, mingling with a more physical satisfaction. He felt Corvo’s beard scrape against his collarbone as his lover finally stirred again. His bleeding had stopped, dark bruising around the places where Isaac’s teeth had broken through. 

“I never knew you enjoyed pain,” Isaac murmured.

“I don’t.” Corvo sighed deeply. Isaac felt his shoulders rise and fall. “I needed it.”

“I hate hurting you. I don’t think I have it in me to do it again.” 

He felt Corvo’s hand brushing back his hair. “It took me much too long to see how gentle you are.”

Isaac kissed the mark he’d left on Corvo’s shoulder. “Tender feelings never last long in the Void. Now that I can sustain them I need you to squander them on.”

That got a low chuckle out of Corvo. He shifted his weight to roll to Isaac’s side. Without realizing just how close the edge of the bed was, he went crashing to the floor with a grunt of indignant surprise.

“Isaac. You’re getting a bigger bed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope this satisfies all of you who've stuck with me this whole time. (*especially* you, happybluemo, please live.)
> 
> and i hope this name works for y'all.
> 
> this is not over, tho I won't be updating three times a week anymore. Until I build up a huge backlog again somehow.


	27. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have some fluff, and a little insight into Corvo.

Corvo was a light sleeper. Since the day he lost Jessamine there were so many nights he couldn’t sleep at all. Until this, curled around his lover, carefully entwined to fit into a too-small bed, he had been sleepless for days. 

It hadn’t been that the ship he was on was traversing the Cullero Gap. The Kestrel was small and agile, and the pilot was one of the best. It had all been _him,_ thoughts of him, wondering what he would find when he reached Karnaca. The corner of his mind that hoarded his fears kept whispering that he would be too late again. He’d arrive to find him dead or dying, his name lost forever, his freedom far too brief.

It was only the solid warmth of Isaac’s body in his arms that gave him surety. That cramped bed became a refuge, and his lover’s name hummed in his head even as he lay dreaming, sang like a bone rune on an altar. 

Beyond that, his dreams were quiet that night. 

Then he woke with a start in the late morning to the sound of the building’s front door opening and voices in the hall. Isaac stirred in his arms, stretched. 

Corvo eased a bit. He recognized the voices, two of them at least. Bianchi, Billie Lurk. The third voice was female, pleasant and soft; likely Reese Kavanaugh, who he knew of but hadn’t yet met.

“Your friends are here,” he murmured in Isaac’s ear while he listened to their footsteps on the stairs. Billie was quiet even when she wasn’t trying.

Isaac made a frustrated sound. He made an abortive attempt to roll onto his back, but the creaking bed was too small to allow it. “Washroom. We reek of sex.”

Corvo peeled himself off the other man and started gathering up his clothes. They managed to duck into the washroom together just as the group was opening the apartment door. There wasn’t time for a real bath. They washed together, standing in the tub with hot water running from the tap. Corvo did his best to keep his hands to himself, aware of how easily they were likely to get sidetracked if either of them didn’t. 

He could hear the sounds of the others in the kitchen, cabinets opening and closing, pots and pans clanging against each other. The clatter of dishes and silverware, and eventually the whistle of a kettle on the stove. He was toweling off when he felt Isaac’s arms around him from behind, a murmur of ‘Wait.’ He paused, the other man holding him, the room filled with vapor, feeling pleasantly insulated from the sounds beyond the door. Corvo turned in that embrace and bent his head to kiss him. For a few moments they lingered, until there was a sharp knock at the door.

“Black, there are three coffee-drinking people here right now and one damned toilet, try not to take all day!” Billie chided.

“Five. Make another pot, please.” Isaac opened the door enough to speak through while Corvo rushed to fasten his pants.

Corvo made eye contact with Billie through that crack in the door. The way she arched her eyebrow, he knew she saw the bite mark on his shoulder. She opened her mouth to comment, but Corvo did his best to give her a look that said “I could still change my mind about you.”

They emerged a few minutes later, dressed, scrubbed, and groomed.

“You have a good evening, Black?” A blonde woman sat at the table with Billie. The morning paper was there, open but largely ignored, next to a bakery box of cornettos and a steaming pot of coffee. Valentino stood over the stove, working on, apparently, omelets, and pausing to acknowledge Corvo with a polite nod.

Isaac just replied with an innocent shrug as he approached the table. The woman gave Corvo an uncertain look, then started to rise.

“Don’t get up,” Corvo said, pulling back Isaac’s chair for him and getting a bewildered look from him in response.

Billie Lurk decided it fell upon her to make the introductions. “Reese, this is the Royal Protector, Corvo Attano. Lord Protector, this is Reese Kavanaugh.”

“Corvo is fine.” He reached across the table to shake Reese’s slender hand. 

“Pleased to meet you,” she said. “Billie told me you two had a chance to talk last night. Thank you.”

Corvo gave her a questioning look. He poured two cups of coffee before he sat down, handing one to Isaac.

“Look at you, smiling with both sides of your face.” Billie was regarding Isaac with satisfaction as she leaned back in her chair.

Corvo watched as Isaac’s smile split into a small grin, even while he tried to fight against it. It was one of the more gratifying moments in his life.

“You got boned like a redshark at the dockside market, didn’t you?” Reese asked, and Isaac’s grin disappeared behind his hands, his face immediately bright red.

“No!!” 

“Did you get to play with that springblade?” Billie chimed in. “Sample the Serkonan sausage?”

Corvo hid his head in his arms, head against the edge of the table, as red in the face as his lover but laughing regardless. “Void, this isn’t breakfast, it’s shivaree.” Emily would be disappointed to have missed this amazing opportunity to give him a hard time. Wyman, too, most likely. Especially right now.

Back in Dunwall, he was sure Emily must have broken into his safe by now and found the decrypted letter he left there. It was easier, he’d decided, to let her find out on her own than to explain himself. Or perhaps it was more that he was completely at a loss as to _how_ to explain himself, short of returning to Dunwall Tower with a familiar man on his arm.

She’d be furious with him, of course. He’d deal with it when he got back.

“I’d _hope_ you’d have at least broken the sixth stricture beyond all repair,” Valentino said over his shoulder.

“Ground it to a powder, don’t worry.” Corvo didn’t raise his head, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Please…” Isaac choked. “Stop.”

Corvo raised his head to see Isaac trying so hard to curl into fetal position that he was almost falling out of his chair. He caught the chair before it tipped over and pulled Isaac close, gently urging his hands away from his face. 

“Shh. Isaac, you can come out now. I think they--”

“Isaac?!” Billie was the first to catch it, on her feet in an instant. “Your name is Isaac?!”

Reese’s face lit up in turn. “It’s _perfect_ , it’s like we should’ve just known!”

Valentino was turned away from the stove, as delighted as the others. “He does rather look like an Isaac. I’m not sure why, but he does.”

Billie was reaching across the table to savagely muss Isaac’s hair. “Nice to meet you, Isaac.”

He screwed up his face, but he still leaned into it, Corvo noticed. Just the way he still leaned against the arm Corvo had caught him with. After centuries in the Void, he was utterly starved for touch.

“Are you all done making coarse speculations about how my night went?”

“We just want the best for you,” Billie said, sitting down again.

“Of course.” Isaac gave in with a small sigh and his smile returned, even if a little more subdued. He added some cream to his coffee. “Where will you be staying while you’re here in Karnaca?” He asked, glancing over at Corvo.

“With you. If you’ll have me. If it’s trouble, I can make other arrangements.” While Corvo could swear he saw Isaac’s eyes brighten at the idea, he glanced to Billie and saw her hesitation. Still, one glance at Isaac and she nodded to him in the end.

Reese broke open a cornetto and offered Isaac half of it. “ _Isaac_ , have you had chocolate yet?”

Isaac shook his head, looking at the faintly brownish cream inside the pastry. He took an experimental nibble, his expression turning from curiosity to avid enjoyment. “There are more of these?”

Reese nodded. “One more chocolate one but you have to split it with me.”

“I accept your terms.”

“Pardon my reach, Lord Attano.” Valentino set down the first of the omelets; one each for the two women. “Yours is next, my friend,” he said to Isaac. Then he looked to Corvo. “What would you like in yours? We have Serkonan sausage — _not_ the euphemistic kind — prosciutto, peppers, onions, Morleyan cheddar, Saggunto goat cheese…”

Corvo shrugged. “Everything, but mostly sausage.”

“Very well, one omelet with barely enough room for eggs.”

“I told you the sausage was a safe bet,” Billie said.

“He likes his food with some _heat_ , even more than most. After Emily’s coronation he made sure a Serkonan chef was hired on. The Gristollian cooks always had a light touch with seasonings, and shied away when he asked for more. It’s unbecoming for a nobleman’s nose to run at the banquet table, after all. Corvo has spent decades making do with Dunwall cooking.”

While Corvo had heard Isaac exposit more than a few times, it felt odd to be subject of one of his short monologues. 

Valentino gave Corvo a sympathetic look. “You poor soul. I have chili flakes, and some of the strongest paprika Tyvia exports.”

“ _Yes_ please.”

Isaac tore open a cornetto and passed it along to him. “He also likes strawberry jam.”

“I knew you watched me, but I didn’t know you were looking that hard.”

“I didn’t expect to like you. I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out why I did.”

Corvo leaned back, turned to Isaac with a lazy smile. “You reach any conclusions?”

“You know what you want,” Isaac said. “And you want the right things.”

Corvo gave that a moment of thought. It wasn’t what he thought he’d say. It was pithy. When he gave it consideration, it was true. He felt strangely proud of that. “... I never thought of myself that way.”

“Are we this bad?” Reese turned to Billie. Then she cut a small piece off her own omelet and fed it to Billie at the end of her fork.

“Nah,” said Billie after she swallowed. “We really need to up our game.”

Valentino arrived at the table with three more plates. He set them down before pulling up a chair from the living room and joining the group. He looked from one end of the table to the other and Corvo saw the look of a man realizing he was the only single person in the room.

“Pardon if I talk shop, my Lord, but if you have an itinerary for the day, I’m not aware of it.” Valentino poured himself a cup of coffee.

“There’s a lot that needs to get done now, before I’m actually in town. I called on the Duke last night to get the lay of the land. I need to contact some of his council and find out where things stand with regards to the Abbey situation. Everything from Campo Seta to Padilla Point is starting to look as fortified as Whitecliff.”

Isaac listened with an indecipherable expression on his face. “For decades I pondered what the world could be if you and your daughter would only champion the people of your Empire the way I knew you could. And now that you’re doing just that, I wish I could keep you for myself instead.”

Corvo looked at him. His hand clasped Isaac’s knee under the table. “You can keep me. I only need a few hours. Tonight, after sundown.” It was hard to face the fact that the greater part of him agreed with Isaac. The one thing he wanted for himself was right here beside him.

“What about the bank situation?” Billie asked.

“There isn’t much I can do about that acting alone. Once the Jessamine arrives I can lean on the courts. Between the Duke’s authority and the Empire’s, we’ll start to see the nobility creep over to the winning side. In the interim, the Jessamine is carrying food and supplies for people who’ve lost their homes. I wish I could’ve brought more _coin_ , but that isn’t up to me.

“That’s why I’m asking Aramis Stilton to help me rob a silver foundry.”

Billie nearly spat out a mouthful of coffee. “You don’t fuck around, do you, Royal Protector?”

Corvo wore a small smile. “Do you think he’d be on board with it? I’m told you’re a friend of his.”

“The miners are already paid when the ore gets carted away. I don’t see why he’d be against it, if he knows where the coin’s going in the end.”

Isaac was giving him an intense stare, one that reminded Corvo how uncomfortable his old eyes had made him at first.

“Every time someone fires a bullet, just for an instant the paths of reality split like the cracks in a shattered window. In fragments of a second, most of them fall away, the bullet’s searing path through the air resolves itself, then the target’s position, and after what feels like an eternity, the impact, the strike or the miss. But in that one instant, I could see a hundred futures of someone lying dead in a spreading pool of their own blood. _You_ , Corvo, are no exception.

“I no longer have that vision, but the memory is fresh. If you get shot, I may never speak to you again.”

It was an empty threat, Corvo thought, but it was only meant to convey the feeling Isaac’s eyes were trying to. It resonated with him, it was a feeling he’d known too well in all his years as a bodyguard. 

“Black. _Isaac._ You don’t have to get so intense about it. He’s Corvo Attano. He’s going to be fine.” Reese spoke with a sympathetic look.

“You don’t know how many times he nearly wasn’t.”

From the look on her face, Reese could hear the edge of panic in his voice. That and maybe she was used to this from him. She radiated a sense of patience and calm. “That goes for every one of us here. We’ve all had close calls. But I’d still place good money that we’ll all still be here tomorrow.”

“I’ll watch his back for you, Isaac.” Billie’s voice was quiet, something strong as steel tempered with an understated warmth.

Corvo could see how much that meant to his lover. He could see the gratitude and relief on his face. Isaac placed such faith in her. 

“What’s your cut?” Corvo asked with a slanted smile.

Billie considered for a moment. “Six silver ingots.”

“That’s obscene. It’s not like you have rent to pay, anymore. Four.”

“Where are you going to find another magic assassin with an all-seeing eye?”

“Four, and I’ll cover any ordinance you need for as long as I’m in Karnaca.”

“You’ll buy it through Reese?”

“That’s like paying you for your own ammunition.”

“So it is.”

Corvo grudgingly conceded with a shrug. “Fine. It’s a deal.” He stood up, spat in his palm, and held out his hand. Billie did the same, spitting into her strange void-matter hand. When she shook his, it was as warm as flesh against his skin.

They sat back down and breakfasted together. What surprised Corvo most was how quickly he found himself feeling comfortable around these strangers. His mind looked back on the day he’d arrived at the Hound’s Pit pub, so many years ago. He’d never stopped feeling like an outsider among the Loyalists. He’d found the most camaraderie from Samuel and from Piero, outsiders themselves in different ways. 

There had been reasons. He’d learned how grief could isolate a person. While the world kept on turning around him, he’d walked in a world of his own, a place that seemed lightless and cold, where his life was like a cliff-face he struggled to find any handhold on. Then, those six months in Coldridge had left him with terror and shame coating him like a layer of pitch. It had barely been possible to speak to anyone at first. He remembered stammering, shutting his mouth sharply, hating the sound of his own voice.

These people were different. Billie and Reese were warm with each other, always trading small smiles and soft words. They let that warmth envelop Isaac just as much. Valentino was expansively generous, unreservedly friendly. Corvo felt as if he were home, enjoying a rare hour of quiet with his fireplace burning high.

When he pulled back from his thoughts he saw Isaac watching him, regarding him as if he could see it all written across his face. “Maybe we’ve always had more in common than I thought,” he said, his voice as gentle as Corvo had ever heard it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> headcanon time: Most of Serkonos still practices shivaree (google it, my dudes) , though it's grown much tamer over the last couple hundred years. The most widely practiced version involves the happy couple getting roasted over an intimate honeymoon brunch by their closest friends and family.


	28. Interlude 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile, back in Dunwall...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always miss these guys between scenes. It makes me grin to think that the Empire is being run by these three weirdos.

Commanding Jameson to open the safe would have been admitting defeat. That, and Emily Kaldwin frankly _hated_ pulling out her Imperial authority with people she was on a first-name basis with. She had been friends with Jameson since she was eleven.

Thusly, she found herself perching on the seat of Corvo’s desk chair in her flannel pajamas, with a stethoscope she’d borrowed from the royal physician’s bag and a handwritten manual on safe-cracking she’d bought off a black market vendor. She’d been working for almost an hour. It was incredibly hard to hear the specific click she was looking for, but she was pretty sure she’d figured out which click it was. Fairly. She wouldn’t know until she’d zeroed in on the last digit.

Then the safe would either open or not. If it didn’t, she could always come back with a grenade. If her father didn’t want his room grenaded, he should know better than to keep secrets from his loving daughter. Especially big secrets. Huge ones, secrets so big it was obvious he was hiding something. Secrets that meant running off on her sweetheart’s ridiculous ship and leaving them wondering what was in Karnaca that needed him that badly.

He’d given her an excuse, of course. Even that had been infuriatingly vague, although his vagueness probably meant there had been some partial truths in it. He’d claimed he had a valuable agent in Karnaca badly in need of his help. He’d mentioned something about a promise he’d made, about making good on his word, though it hadn’t been clear what his word had been. But whoever this top agent was, Jameson hadn’t heard of them, and knew nothing about the situation at all.

Emily had only known he wasn’t lying by the look of exasperation on his face. Concern or sympathy would have meant he’d known something. Exasperation meant Corvo was leaving him out of the loop and expecting him to somehow do his job regardless. It was something they were both familiar with.

She finally heard the last click. The one that was subtly more of a clack. She put down the stethoscope and took a deep breath as she grabbed the safe’s handle. 

It turned.

The safe opened. Inside was her father’s journal, a wooden box of bone charms, a bundle of letters bound with twine, and a small bundle of folded papers stuffed into an envelope she recognized. She took the envelope and then, after a moment of thought, the journal as well. She already knew what was in that bundle of letters.

Emily turned on the lamp over Corvo’s desk. Inside the envelope, the first lines of the letter made her jaw drop. She tried to tell herself it couldn’t be what it looked like, but from the way her father had reacted, it probably was.

Then, everything below it was written in code.

Shuffling to the second folded bundle she’d found in the envelope was what she presumed was the deciphered text. She read through it, backing up again and again to re-read if only because she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She couldn’t believe what she was learning for the first time.

At first it was something like an impossible tale of dark adventure, staged across Dunwall and Karnaca. But as she read, hearing the Outsider speaking through every word on the page, what she saw was more personal. He had a lot to say to her father, not just about things that had happened, but things that he felt. He wrote about Corvo’s warmth with him, thanking him for his tenderness, for giving him comfort and a refuge while he faced his darkest hour. 

They had been lovers, and she had never known.

The Outsider’s sorrow and guilt poured out onto the page. He had left Corvo to grieve another lover. Emily thought of her father, the way he’d vanished the day the Mark disappeared, the way she hadn’t seen him until late the next morning, looking sleepless, barely speaking.

She saw her own tears fall onto the page.

Of course that was when the door opened. 

“Em?” Wyman spoke softly. Then he saw her there, shaking, her face red and bleary with crying, and he rushed over to her, put his arms around her. 

“No, no, no! Hush, love, oh love, what’s happened?”

Emily buried her face against Wyman’s shoulder, feeling him stroking her loose hair. He held her tight, hushed her with a voice she found so soothing even when he _wasn’t _trying. But it just made her sob.__

____

____

He was the only person who ever let her just cry it out. She’d learned early in life that crying around her father left him even more upset than she was, desperate to fix anything that was wrong. Wyman gave tenderness, sympathy, and a promise that once she was ready, they would work things out together. 

“How could he?! I am so angry…! I am so angry at Father right now…!” 

Wyman held her, his chin on the crown of her head, rocking her in his arms until she started to feel coherent again, until her wracking sobs slowed down. 

“What happened, love? What did your impossible father do?” 

Emily sniffled. She couldn’t share the whole truth, even with Wyman. But at least she knew, now. “That agent he said he went to Karnaca for? Remember that story?” 

Wyman nodded. 

“It’s his _lover_ , Wyman! He never told me, he never breathed a word of it to anyone! But they were in love and father thought he was _dead_ but he sent that letter to say he was alright and he was in Karnaca and he said he’d come to Dunwall but father didn’t want to wait and that’s why he took your ship!” 

Wyman stared while he sifted through that babble. “His… his _lover_?” He paused and his eyes widened. “Oh, Void, and he thought he was _dead_?! That must have destroyed him, _no…”_

Emily swallowed hard and nodded. “Remember when I found the love letters? Mother and Father’s?” She had been fifteen the first time she’d broken into her father’s room and well and truly snooped it. She and Wyman had only been friends back then, but he was the one who’d found her sitting on the rug at the foot of Corvo’s bed, bawling. 

She’d known what it had been like to lose her mother, but after she’d read those letters she’d learned what it must have meant to lose the one you were in love with. She’d learned how much restraint her father and mother had always had to hold, how rarely they could ever just enjoy the love they had. How much of what there was between them could only ever be halfway fulfilled. 

That day, she’d learned how deeply lonely her father must have been, and how high he built up the walls around himself to keep anyone from seeing him crumbling behind them. 

Tonight, she was learning he had never changed. 

“Oh, Void,” Wyman repeated. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. 

“Reading this felt like that. When I told you how Father wasn’t acting right… I _know_ it was over this, he got word that something terrible happened, and--” 

The door opened again. This time it was Jameson, wrapped in a robe, carrying a whale-oil torch in one hand and a handgun in the other. 

“OUTSIDER’S HAIRY ARSE!” He swore and kicked the door shut behind him. “What are you two _doing_ here?! Get back to bed, Empress, you don’t get enough sleep as it is! How long have you been skulking around the Tower in your pajamas?!” 

“Her Pajamesons, you mean.” Wyman was smiling through it all, pointing out that Emily’s blue-pinstriped flannels and Jameson’s coincidentally matched. 

Jameson gave him a hard stare. 

“How did you know anyone was in here?” Emily asked. 

“Because there’s a silent alarm rigged to the door and it buzzes me awake if anyone opens it!” 

“Huh. Good to know,” she shrugged. She hadn’t entered by the door, thankfully, just on the suspicion that her father would’ve had something in place. Wyman’s entrance had been the one to trigger it. 

Jameson’s eyes fell to the letter on the desk. “But since we’re snooping, what’s in the-- Emily, were you crying?” His voice softened immediately and he rushed over to the desk. Emily wondered if it was her red nose and puffy eyelids he’d noticed, or the smear of wet snot on the front of Wyman’s silk pajamas. Pajamesons. 

Emily folded the letter quickly. “It’s … uh… it’s actually kind of… intimate. You really shouldn’t read it. I shouldn’t have read it! _Instant_ regret. I’m putting it back now.” 

“Empress please. _Please_. He buggered off to Karnaca and didn’t tell me _anything_.” 

Emily rubbed at her nose with the back of her wrist. “He has a lover he never told anyone about, even after he was convinced he’d died. He’s rushing to Karnaca to see him again.” 

Jameson blinked owlishly. “This is like the plot of an operetta.” 

Wyman beamed. “Oh, you think so too? I’m already thinking of adapting it for the stage.” 

“He’ll kill you, Wyman,” Emily and Jameson said in unison. 

“That’s why I’m going to use a pen name.” Wyman was completely unphased. “ _Wounded the heart that loves too deep, longing for one across the water,”_ he sang. _“Lost is the one I tried to keep…_ No, no, I can’t rhyme this with ‘slaughter,’ that’s heavy-handed even for me.” 

“He’ll figure it out,” said Emily. “Somehow.” 

“How, pray tell?” 

Jameson just looked tired. “By the way you’re going to sprain your arm from patting yourself on the back.” 

“You underestimate my back-patting fortitude.” 

“I’m sure everyone does,” said Jameson. “But does it say who he is? You did say it’s a ‘he’, right?” 

“It’s someone that... It’s a friend of the family, sort of? I’ve met him a few times before. It’s not somebody you’d know.” Emily thought about it. “Damn. How did he choose the only person I’ve ever met who’s more intense than he is?” 

“But who _is_ it?” Jameson was clearly not satisfied with that answer. 

Emily rubbed her temples. “There’s a reason I can’t say. You’ll meet him when they get back to Dunwall, but you have to trust me.” 

“Thank you for being at least a tad more open than Lord Attano,” Jameson sighed. “If you have anything to say to him, write it down and I’ll get it on a boat to Cullero before sun-up. It’s the least I can do.” 

“Tell him I’m going to _kill_ him.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wyman's song, to the tune of "Sorry Her Lot Who Loves Too Well" by Gilbert and Sullivan.
> 
> And I hope you will always call them pajamesons now.


	29. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The best gifts are useful ones, aren't they?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: EXPLICIT
> 
> mostly in the second half of the chapter.

“Not being in town,” as Corvo put it, simplified some things, but complicated others. Corvo had business around the city, and for what he couldn’t do himself behind his mask, he needed assistance. So it was that after breakfast, Isaac Black and Valentino Bianchi found themselves running errands, mainly in the Cyria East District. Corvo had warned them away from the central part of the city. The Abbey had been bolstering their forces in Karnaca since their raid on Battista weeks past. The Duke was doing his best to keep them contained, but his authority only went so far.

Something would have to be done about it, but in the meantime, Corvo wanted to send the Kestrel back to Dunwall laden with gifts by way of apology. While Corvo was securing small crates of minor luxuries, he’d asked the two of them to do some window shopping on his behalf.

“...but, as it stands, I don’t _want_ the promotion. I don’t want to leave the Blackfish, and I don’t especially care about the money. I just… don’t know how I can refuse him.”

Isaac turned his head slightly towards the other man as they walked side by side across a small park. “With words? To have more opportunities than you need is usually a blessing in this world.”

“Words! Dear Mister Black, he’s the Royal Protector! His authority is second only to the Empress.”

“Yet what he gave you was an offer, not a command.” Isaac turned his eyes forward, then upward. It was another clear day. The top of Shindaerey Peak was sharply etched in silver-white against a blue sky. “Tell him what you’ve told me. Come to an arrangement that’s agreeable to both of you. If you’re soliciting my opinion, I’d like you to continue on in whatever capacity you’ve been serving. I’d miss you if you left.”

Valentino let out a frustrated huff of air. “But he’s… I suppose I can _try_...”

A woman’s voice droned from the loudspeaker above them, suspended on a cable between street lamps. _“Residents of the Cyria District are encouraged to attend local services by the Abbey of the Everyman. The moral guidance of the Overseers is integral to our life and society. Bone talismans, suspicious carvings, or the odd behavior of a neighbor should be reported to the Abbey of the Everyman immediately. This has been brought to you by the Upper Cyria District Independent Householders' Commission. Our community is our pride.”_

Isaac cast a brief glare up at the loudspeaker. It mystified him how something expensive, useless, annoying, and almost universally disliked had nonetheless became prevalent.

“Ah,” he said in reply to Valentino. “You want my intercession.” He turned to the other man more fully, walking backward for a step or two, his hands clasped behind his back. He looked at him with a faint, crooked smile. “You’re terrified of Corvo, aren’t you.”

Bianchi flustered. “Somewhat, yes! The man toppled _two_ interregnums in one week!”

“You’re not an interregnum, why should you worry?” Isaac’s amusement was plain in his voice. 

“Could you, though? Intercede?”

“No,” he answered bluntly. “I don’t make a habit of doing for people what they can do for themselves. But I can make it easier.”

“Any help at all would be appreciated,” Valentino said.

“The problem is, you don’t see Corvo yet. You see the legend he’s wrapped in. You see his title, his fame and fortune. And perhaps you see his mask and his sword. Those, at least, are real.” They reached the edge of the park and crossed the street together. On the other side of the avenue there was a row of shops for them to browse, large plate glass windows and bright-colored awnings. 

“You need to know him as a man. Unless you speak with him, you never will. Every time you choose to steer yourself away, all you’ll accomplish is to veil him in a thicker layer of your own fears.” Isaac paused, looking into the window of a shop. There were heavy iron bars obscuring the jeweler’s display, but wrought into a graceful pattern reminiscent of reeds and rushes. There were womens’ necklaces, bracelets and rings in the window, but it was a selection of mens’ wrist watches that drew his attention.

“You should know, before you speak to him next, that Corvo Attano is a man who let his daughter ride on his shoulders until she was fourteen, and attended every tea party she ever hosted. You should know how once, on the night of the fugue feast, he and Empress Jessamine snuck out in a rowboat and managed to capsize it when they tried to make love under the fireworks. They had to sneak back into Dunwall Tower with most of their clothes missing, reeking of the Wrenhaven.”

Valentino was grinning, laughter in his eyes, as Isaac opened the shop door and beckoned him inside. 

“I could also tell you about the way he sneaks into the Tower kitchens whenever he comes in late from the streets because he knows the lights will be on and people working, life going on in all its mundane simplicity to drown out the taste left in his mouth by all the death he’s seen. The way he goes to pubs alone just to hear people talking without having to speak. The way he feels as if he spends half his time in Gristol just trying to keep warm, or the way he wishes he could spend more time practicing on his guitar.”

“I think I can relate,” Valentino sighed.

When a shop clerk approached them, Isaac pointed out an unusual wristwatch and a pair of cufflinks, both in rose gold. He felt fairly confident that Wyman Rourke would like them. They were both somewhat minimal and edging towards the feminine. They settled the bill with a bank note from Valentino’s wallet. Corvo had given him a generous sheaf of them before they’d parted ways.

Isaac’s thoughts kept wandering to Corvo, as had become habit. At least his heart was calmer as his mind wandered, wondering where Corvo was, what he was doing, perhaps most importantly when it would be done. He thought of Corvo’s eyes, the way he’d looked that morning. Calm, warm, the lines in his face easing, the shadows under his eyes less present. And the smile on his lips, there and then not, sometimes wry and weary but irresistible always.

“Isaac.”

It was still so incredibly strange, hearing his name. It was like the first breath of air to someone on the verge of drowning. On the lips of his friends, it was like the clapper on a bell, and he rang with it. He wondered if he would love anyone who called him by his name, after so long without it. 

He came back from his reverie with Valentino holding the door to the next shop, and he hurried to catch up.

“When he came to me for a debriefing, you were clearly all he could think about.” Valentino was smiling as they browsed. “I think … what every musician wants, besides just to _play,_ is to bring people closer. We want to help people find the things they need in one another, be it comfort, or camaraderie, or love. I didn’t expect to find my side job rewarding in that way.”

Isaac regarded the other man. “You would find yourself doing that regardless of your line of work. You draw remarkable people to you. You magnetize them. I know you see your life as softer and kinder than what the people around you have known, and you consider yourself blessed. You’ve never understood that the light you live in is the light you cast.”

Valentino smiled at him and shook his head, bewildered. Those words reached him deeply. “Were you like this, ah, as you were before?”

Isaac raised his hand and made a gesture, his palm flat and parallel to the floor. Somewhat yes and somewhat no. “My… situation limited me in ways that are hard to explain. I’m more who I _wanted_ to be, now.”

“That still leaves me wondering how you acquired the reputation that you did. It couldn’t be further off the mark.” The words were tenderly meant, and Valentino clasped Isaac’s shoulder as he passed behind him, looking at another display.

It was a clothing shop, wool and knitting mainly, but Isaac found an over-long scarf, richly dyed velvet with a motif of peacock feathers burnt out of it. It seemed like another safe bet. When they met back at the till, Valentino had found something as well; a knitted scarf long and wide enough to be shawl, its color a rusty orange-red.

“For yourself?” Isaac was curious.

Valentino shook his head. “There’s someone-- there’s a patron, a regular. She could use a winter coat but she can’t afford one.” He thought for a moment, not meeting Isaac’s gaze while the shop clerk took the gifts and boxed them up. “She’s too proud for handouts. If I tell her someone left this at the cafe she might accept it.” 

It was Isaac’s turn to see right through Valentino. “Is she pretty?”

Valentino gave him helpless look. They left the shop, another bag on Valentino’s arm. “Yes, very,” he sighed.

Isaac halfway smiled as they walked to the next shop. “I see. You _clearly_ cannot quit your dayjob.”

The next shop was their actual destination, and it took up a fair portion of the block. It was a furniture store. Corvo couldn’t be present to help choose a new bed for Isaac’s room, but he’d said he didn’t have a preference beyond it actually having room for two, and making sure to get it delivered the same day. 

It was Isaac’s opinion they should get the biggest bed that would still fit in the room. It wasn’t as though he used the space for anything else. The chest of drawers he had could fit in the closet. As the salesman guided them through the options, Isaac found himself thinking less of _sleeping_ and more of other intended uses. He kept picturing Corvo’s body naked against the sheets and entirely his. 

There was a bed with a low, square headboard upholstered in tufted velvet. Isaac sat down on the edge, then laid back. The mattress seemed fine, not that he had a great deal of basis for comparison.

He sat back up, realizing he had one important question to ask, but feeling his mouth go dry when he thought about actually posing it. He drew Valentino aside, excusing himself to the salesman.

“I need you to ask him if it will creak.”

Valentino stared. “You mean… during--”

“ _Yes_ , that. It has to be… solid.” Isaac was beginning to grow annoyed with his own face for blushing in moments like this one.

Valentino began to grin. “I don’t make a habit of doing for others what they can do for themselves,” he said.

That was simply cruel. Fair, but cruel.

Isaac gave Valentino a flat look, then finally squared his shoulders and returned to the salesman. “I need to know if the frame is… robust enough for my needs.”

The salesman cast a glance toward Valentino and began to nod knowingly, when Isaac quickly shook his head.

“No, not _him!_ ” His composure disintegrated. “That is…! Valentino is a genteel and charming man and anyone would be lucky to have him but he isn’t--”

Valentino stepped in with a grin on his face. “My friend’s lover is tall and notoriously athletic,” Valentino said. “I believe my friend was hoping to take full and vigorous advantage.”

The salesman grinned back with understanding and unvoiced laughter. He turned and gave the headboard a very solid push. “Our delivery men will assemble the bed on site, but done properly there should be nothing to worry about. They can also fasten the headboard to the wall, to prevent any accidental bumps and bangs.”

They both turned to Isaac to find him chewing hard on his lower lip and looking stubbornly away. He nodded his approval, and Valentino negotiated the rest. They paid a high fee for it, but the shop’s crew would deliver the bed immediately, along with a set of fresh linens, new down pillows, and a duvet. 

“What matters is that you _tried._ ” Valentino gave Isaac a pat on the shoulder as they left the shop together.

“I will never be able to show my face in this district again,” Isaac said. 

Across the street, a tall figure stood in a shadowed alleyway. He leaned into the light and the midday sun glinted off a steel mask. Corvo beckoned them over and slipped back into the shadows.

When the three of them gathered in the alley, Corvo was carrying a wooden case of some sort tucked under his arm. After a short discussion, he sent Valentino back to the apartment with the gifts they’d bought, and showed Isaac into the building beside them through a side door.

The moment they were alone, Corvo pinned him against the wall and kissed him hard.

Isaac rose into the kiss, accepting Corvo’s tongue with open lips. His hands were cupped against the back of Corvo’s neck, Corvo’s free hand gripping hard on his shoulder. They had only been apart for a few hours yet Isaac felt as hungry for him as the night before. His tongue teased past Corvo’s teeth and Corvo yielded, let it thrust posessively into his mouth.

That kiss broke into a hundred smaller kisses. Isaac kissed his lover’s lips, his chin, the corners of his mouth, the edge of his jaw. Corvo’s lips brushed his face with answering kisses. Isaac felt his breath shiver across his ear and he slipped his hands downward, just under Corvo’s collar.

He remembered the night he’d chosen Corvo. How the choice had been clear, yet the reasons murky. The waters within him had been so clouded he hadn’t been able to see the tenderness he felt, the admiration, all the things that wanted to reach towards this man but couldn’t. Not when he was bound. 

Isaac could see the flush in Corvo’s cheeks, just a hint of it but present. He could see his eyes half-lidded, his pupils wide, but something else in the lines of his face. Something strong enough that when he saw Isaac’s eyes staring into his, he turned his gaze away. Yet he rolled his shoulder as he turned, letting Isaac see the hint of a wince, an oddly satisfied one, at the tenderness of his new mark.

“Upstairs,” Corvo murmured. “To the roof. I have something to give you.”

Isaac hesitated. He wanted to catch whatever it was, this furtive thing he glimpsed there as his kisses took down Corvo’s walls like a tender siege. But in the end he chose patience. 

They hurried up the three flights of stairs to the roof door. There was a sort of pergola beyond it, some outdoor furniture gathered beneath. The building was closed, the apartments secured with steel shutters. Posted notices mentioned a bloodfly infestation, but it seemed the nests had been removed, and crews were simply being slow about repairing the damage that remained.

On the roof, Corvo set the wooden case he was carrying down upon a rusting steel table. He looked to Isaac as he straightened and drew back half a step. “Now that I’m giving this to you, there’s a part of me that isn’t sure how much it suits you. Still, you need one, so I’d be honored if you’d carry this.”

Isaac opened the case. Inside, couched in a lining of deep blue velvet, was the most elegant handgun he’d ever seen. Black steel and ebony wood with the stark contrast of a krust-pearl grip. A sharkskin leather pouch held, he presumed, the tools he would need for cleaning and maintaining it. 

Isaac took the gun from the case, felt its weight in his hand. “I will carry it,” he said. “And hope I never need it.”

“I can teach you to shoot.”

“I’ve had several offers.” Isaac checked to see if the gun was loaded. He made certain the safety was in place, even though the clip was empty. “Ever since these were invented I feel like they’re all I see. Guns loaded, guns fired, guns coveted and hoarded and treated better than most children are.”

Corvo set down a clip of ammunition. He indicated a line of bottles set on the parapet at the edge of the roof with a jerk of his chin. “Show me what you can do. I took some time with it, the sights should be aligned for you already.” Corvo walked over to the edge of the roof and peered down. “I think you can empty a clip before the Guard comes running.”

“And after that?”

“We hide.”

Isaac loaded the gun without trouble. He aimed, holding the gun with both hands. He fired, and the first bottle shattered at the neck.

_“Residents of the Cyria District are encouraged to attend…”_

Isaac ignored the shout of alarm from somewhere far below, and he fired again. The next three bottles went down quickly, only one missed shot glancing off cement. 

_”...local services by the Abbey of the Everyman. The moral guidance of the Overseers is…”_

After a moment of careful sighting, Isaac shot out the coupling between the loudspeaker and its cable.

_”... integral to our life and society.”_ It crashed loudly in the middle of the street below, shattering against the carriage rails. Corvo stood gaping while guardsmen below shouted at each other.

Isaac smiled and ejected the empty clip.

Corvo grinned wolfishly at him and rushed to the far edge of the roof. “Come on. They won’t look for us in a shuttered apartment.” He vaulted the parapet and landed on a small balcony below. When Isaac swung his leg over, Corvo took his hand and helped him down. One by one they ducked through a window and shut it tight behind them.

Everything that remained in the quarantined apartment was draped with dusty canvas. There were bright spots of wallpaper showing the shapes of all the frames and trophies that had been on those walls once. Isaac could hear the guards forcing the building’s door open, still shouting to each other. Some of them doubted the shots had even come from this direction.

Still, they kept quiet. The two of them crept slowly, silently, to the room furthest from the shuttered door. It was a bedroom, though the bed was missing its mattress. There was an alcoved window to one side of the room, a divan resting beneath it with its canvas shroud. They sat beside each other there, listening.

Minutes passed. They leaned closer to one another. Isaac brought his lips to Corvo’s throat while they listened to the heavy shuffling of boots outside and growling, grumbling conversation. Isaac could feel Corvo’s breath quickening, and he dragged his hand along Corvo’s thigh to cup him through his pants.

Corvo was hard for him in an instant. “If they hear us…” Corvo barely breathed the words.

Isaac started working his pants open. “How does it feel, thinking that they might?” His whisper was barely any louder. The sound of Corvo swallowing was louder than both.

Isaac slipped off the divan onto his knees, pushing Corvo’s legs apart to give him room. Corvo’s shaft was thick and heavy in his hand as he guided it out of his pants, its fat tip dark as a bruise where it peeked shyly from his foreskin. He hefted his balls free as well, wanting him exposed. Looking up into Corvo’s eyes, Isaac wet his lips with his tongue.

Corvo choked on a moan when Isaac’s plush lips kissed his tip.

Isaac had his arms braced on Corvo’s thighs. He could feel the way they tensed, the way Corvo fought to keep from thrusting forward. He looked up at Corvo, waited for him to collect himself.

“Watch,” Isaac whispered, but Corvo was riveted already.

He dragged his lips against Corvo’s tip. He sucked him, drew him into his mouth, caressed him with his tongue. His kept his eyes on Corvo’s face the entire time.

He watched as Corvo’s eyes widened, fixated on his own. He watched as his lips parted, as his chest rose and fell and his eyes finally rolled shut. He could feel Corvo’s cock flex and swell thicker in his grip.

He shut his own eyes then, blocking out everything but the two of them, the patient motions of lips and tongue, the hitch and shudder in Corvo’s quiet breathing. The feeling of Corvo’s hands in his hair, just carding through it, urging him on but never forcing.

He could hear the footsteps of the guards returning down the stairs from the roof. His tongue swiped across Corvo’s tip, worried at his slit, teased back his foreskin, a deliberate assault to see if he could force a sound from him.

Corvo gripped the edge of the divan so hard his knuckled popped, head tipped back and mouth open with a moan he still kept stifled. But his hips tensed and rolled in a desperate, restrained thrust, and the floorboards creaked loudly beneath them.

The footsteps came to a stop outside the shuttered door. The guards spoke to one another quickly in hushed voices. They’d been heard.

Isaac drew the tip of his tongue along Corvo’s slit, tasting his precum, teasing him closer until Corvo’s throttled whisper of “Isaac, _please!_ ”

He stopped with the first drops of thicker semen on his tongue, Corvo fighting to silence his breathing as he braced at the edge of climax.

Finally the guards moved on.

Isaac lowered his head again, sucking hard. Storeys below them the front door shut again and Corvo voiced a hoarse, ragged moan an instant later, his come flooding into Isaac’s willing mouth. Isaac milked the shaft in his grip and swallowed it down, tasting its faint bitterness on his tongue.

Corvo eased back on the couch, fought to catch his breath. Isaac rocked back on his heels, wiping his mouth on the back of his wrist.

“That was wicked,” Corvo said hoarsely. “But... inspired.”

“Why let an opportunity go to waste?” Isaac pulled himself up, leaning over Corvo to kiss him again. He could feel his own erection straining against his pants, but he felt satisfied even without a climax of his own.

Corvo drew him in, arms around his waist while Isaac straddled Corvo’s lap. He planted kisses under Isaac’s chin that made his breath quicken. 

Those kisses trailed lower and Isaac shuddered hard, hands clenching against Corvo’s shoulders. “Not there, not now,” he breathed. Not on his throat, not yet. He was trembling faintly, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Corvo drew back. His hands slid along Isaac’s spine. It was a comfort. It brought him back from the strange place it took him, being touched with tenderness where he still remembered the bite of a blade and the heat of his own blood while his body grew terribly cold.

Isaac curled in against Corvo’s body, felt strong arms wrap around him, and everything was well. He let his eyes drift shut, spent long minutes just listening to Corvo breathe. 

“Don’t be too long about your business, tonight,” Isaac said at last. “If you wish to give me a gift that suits me better, give me more of your time.”

“As much as I can,” Corvo said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Isaac's gun is a karnaca'd-up, SUPER sleek and unimaginably gorgeous version of [a whitney wolverine](https://78.media.tumblr.com/c06716b75ec64e3aa4fe62ca1cc086bb/tumblr_n9amyxjkcT1tsahu4o1_500.jpg)
> 
> and political commentary, in MY fanfic? it's more likely than you think.


	30. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Billie Lurk helps Corvo Attano plan a silver heist, she finds herself cast in a familiar role.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: this chapter alludes to Daud not being a perfect angel. Which, if Tumblr is any indication, is severely triggering to some people.
> 
> Billie and Corvo continue to be uneasy around each other. In the background, Isaac is too horny to notice. Next update will be smutty, hang in there.
> 
> [NEW FAN ART from MagpieQueen](http://yuunobi-art.tumblr.com/post/169675685102/listen-kids-im-dying-over-cinnabarbarian-fanfic) of Billie and Black sleeping back to back when they camped out for a night on Shindaerey in chapter one. I basically cry whenever people draw things for me and this is so beautiful.

Billie came in through the skylight when the sun was getting low. She tossed her trunk down first and it hit the floor with a loud thump, setting off a startled yelp elsewhere in the apartment. Reese darted in from bedroom hallway. 

“Billie! You just about gave me a heart attack.” She was grinning, though, her eyes warm. Reese was always happy to see her.

Billie swung down from the open skylight. She hung onto the sill long enough to close the glass above her. When her feet touched the floor, Reese was dragging her blue trunk out of the way. “Moving in? Are we shacking up _formally_ now, is that it?”

Billie half-smiled. “For a little while. I don’t know.”

Reese sat on the arm of her sofa, giving Billie a thoughtful look. “Did you talk to Isaac, because I don’t think he meant to kick you out when he reeled his boyfriend in.”

Billie shook her head, huffed a laugh into her hand. “He’s thinking with his second head right now, and I can’t begrudge him. He’ll know where to find me if he starts to miss me. I’m just trying to avoid finding out how thin the walls are.”

Reese grabbed the trunk by one of its leather handles and started dragging it to the bedroom. “Wellp. I’m not going to complain about more chances to sleep late and snuggle up.”

Billie grabbed the other handle and helped with the trunk, wondering if her intention to give Black his honeymoon had ended in giving herself one as well. Reese’s blonde hair was caught up in a tortoiseshell clip at the nape of her neck, looking loose and soft and effortlessly gorgeous.

Once the trunk was set down on a chair next to the dresser, Billie snuck her arms around Reese’s waist, hugging her close from behind. She buried her nose in Reese’s hair, breathed in tobacco and rosewater. “I’ve been thinking…” Billie murmured.

“Mmhmm?” Reese’s hands settled on hers, even her void-matter hand. Somehow even that strange dark stone could _feel_ the warm and softness of her touch. 

“Thinking I spend a lot of time chasing coin just out of habit. Thinking… maybe I need to step back a little. Figure out what I really want right now and take aim. I’ve never been in a place where I could do that, until now. Before it was mostly just running, fighting to stay afloat.”

Reese leaned back in her arms, made another mellow, affirmative noise. “I hope I fit into that, somewhere.”

“Front and center, I’m thinking.” Billie kissed the wispy curls at her temple. “I don’t know why it’s so hard to figure out. I feel like I could do almost anything, after what I did on Shindaerey Peak. But I also feel like... There’s something I _should_ be doing but I don’t know what it is, yet.” 

It was such a contrast to Reese, her plans and her goals. Billie admired them, admired Reese for that kind of clarity and purpose. She wanted to see it all happen for her -- she wanted to be there when she passed her exams, and maybe even opened her own practice. But why was it so hard for Billie to sort out what it was she wanted for herself?

Reese drew away slowly to sit on the edge of her bed. She patted the mattress beside her and Billie joined her there. The two of them leaned against one another. “Because of all this magic you have now, you mean? You’re going to keep closing those ‘hollows’ you told me about, right?”

Billie nodded. “I… saw something, or heard something, when I closed the one at Stilton’s manor. There’s something changing in the Void and it’s connected to Bl-- to _Isaac._ I don’t think he knows it.”

“Good change, or bad change?”

“Good,” Billie said, resolute on that point at least. “Maybe almost too good to be true. I don’t want to talk to him about it until I know more.”

“Good call,” Reese murmured. She held Billie’s strange prosthetic in her hands, tracing its cracks and crevasses thoughtfully. “Especially right now. Let him get some time with his boyfriend, and you can have some time with _me_ , and maybe we can all start remembering what a normal life is like.”

Billie chuckled, leaning her head against Reese’s shoulder. “This isn’t normal, for me. But I’d like it to be.”

Reese’s arms wrapped around Billie’s waist. “This is a pretty big step up from my old normal, too.”

“Do we get to keep this?” Billie asked, her voice brittle.

“I don’t know. I think the thing to do is pretend we can, as long as we can.”

They’d stayed together that way until after sundown, curled into one another’s embrace and trying to let each breath distil quiet into calm. But as the dark set in, there was work to be done.

Billie met up with the masked Royal Protector at the edges of Stilton’s estate. Together, they scaled the high wall that bordered his back garden. Some combination of her skills and her personal entanglements had made her Corvo Attano’s de-facto guide to the city-by-night. Regardless of how uncomfortable she was with the role, she took to it like a fish to water. It was exactly how she’d assisted Daud for years, before she’d tried staging a little coup of her own.

“You keep bringing me the most interesting visitors, old friend.” Stilton was there in his gazebo waiting for them, rolling out floor plans and blueprints over a garden table not quite large enough to accomodate. Billie introduced the Royal Protector and the three of them got down to business. They had a heist to plan.

Stilton told them their best bet wasn’t the foundry itself, but the rail system leading out of it. The rails from the foundry had a junction with the rail system for the lumber carts from Shindaerey slope, conveniently enough. Lumber cart accidents were hardly unheard of, and always took most of a day to clear. The silver carts would be held back until the rails were cleared that evening, and they’d be sent down en masse when the foundry bosses got the all clear. If the switches were meddled with then, the whole day’s output could end up on the far side of Karnaca, in a canal warehouse where no one would see them unload it all onto a waiting coal barge.

Corvo seemed impressed by the elegance of it all. They wouldn’t even have to take any major risks; so much of what needed to be done could be accomplished with a few good crossbow shots from safe, remote perches.

“Tell Isaac I’m doing a good job watching your back already,” Billie said dryly.

“Isaac?” Stilton raised a shaggy eyebrow.

“Black,” Billie clarified. “Didn’t I mention? To the rest of the Empire, Corvo’s the Royal Protector, but to us he’s mostly ‘Black’s Boyfriend’.”

“ _Is that so?_ ” Stilton’s eyebrows arched in clear amusement. “No wonder you’ve been preoccupied, if _that’s_ waiting in your bed. I would’ve cancelled and stayed in, personally.”

“I almost did,” Corvo rumbled, rubbing the back of his neck.

Stilton chuckled. “I was going to invite you to stay for a smoke and a drink, but I think I’m doing you a bigger favor by shooing you off back home. Some things are more important than whiskey and hobnobbery.”

Corvo had thanked him awkwardly, but in good humor, and the two of them went back over the wall, up to the rooftops of the Battista District.

Billie halted when she noticed Corvo lagging behind. He paused on a rooftop, crouched there with his coat billowing out around him in the heavy current gusting down the wind corridor.

Billie circled back around, watching him watch the city. She couldn’t help thinking of Daud. The sense of restlessness he radiated sometimes, the capacity to explode into violence coiled in him like a spring. The way he kept his thoughts close to the vest. And maybe, she grudgingly acknowledged, in the way she was afraid of him.

She’d been afraid of Daud. She’d spent her years as a Whaler telling herself she wasn’t. She’d tried to emulate him -- The Knife of Dunwall, cold and hard as steel. Daud gave his Whalers a home, but it was one where everyone paid rent. If the life they lived didn’t crush the sentiment out of them, they had an obligation to do away with the lingering scraps of it themselves. There was no room for it. Hesitation cost dearly, in coin or in life and limb. Often, both.

It wasn’t possible to see Daud work and not know how easily he could turn his blade on anyone. He killed without a qualm, whatever the job required. No quarter given to anyone, no such thing as an innocent bystander. Anyone who hindered him, anyone who witnessed, went down. Billie had seen him ‘clean house’ when some of the Whalers had grown sloppy enough to pose a liability. He’d made sure to tell the ones left standing, while they gathered up the bodies and mopped up the blood, not to think they couldn’t get the same.

Billie had had nightmares about all the familiar faces there must have been lining the bottom of the Wrenhaven like cobblestones.

If there was anything reassuring it was that he never raised his fist or his blade in anger. His voice, certainly, but violence was a trade to him, and he was a professional. If he’d finally drawn on her it wouldn’t have been rage that moved him to. But there could also be no appeal, when his heart had no say at all in the choices he made. If he’d decided she needed to die, that would be it, judgment made and swiftly executed. Daud hated to waste time.

Daud’s death had at least relieved her of that burden. That fear, laid alongside such a heavy regret, to burn upon his pyre. But now, keeping company with the Royal Protector, she found herself shouldering a familiar load. More fear of someone bigger and stronger than she was, more fear of not knowing how cruel he could be, or how deceptive, or where his limits lay. 

The Eye could help her to a degree, at least. If he hated her, if he was lying, she was certain she’d be able to see it if she tried. There was *something* there when he looked at her, dark and discordant, but she read it more as wariness.

Then, there were ways Corvo Attano was nothing like Daud. Daud had been hard-headed, calculating, almost the definition of a cold-blooded killer. Corvo was, or at least seemed to be, the opposite. He weighed his risks and his choices just as carefully, but he followed his heart. He’d followed it all the way here from Dunwall.

Billie came up beside him and she saw him turn just slightly to watch her.

“Am I slipping? Was I that distracted, back there?”

Billie gave his question a moment of thought and shook her head. That was different, too. Daud wouldn’t have asked. Never admit weakness, never appear vulnerable. Don’t treat others as your peers, there are no ‘peers’, there is always a pecking order. Stay at the top or get ground into the dirt. 

“Your mind might’ve wandered a couple times. Stilton was right, you’ve got a pretty good reason for that.”

Corvo seemed dissatisfied. “Even good excuses are still excuses.”

“And every mistake is a past mistake. Everything we did tonight was prep work. It’s tomorrow when you need your head in the game.”

Corvo was silent behind his mask. Eventually he nodded. “Maybe after the job I’ll take some time. Isaac would like that.”

“What about you?”

Billie could see him tilt his head. He took a seat on the edge of the roof, legs dangling, and he slid his mask off. “Nothing would please me more.”

Billie sat down a few feet away. “I’ve never seen him like he was today, with you.”

Corvo smiled at that, looking down at the streets below their feet. “Neither have I. He’s so different now. He’s himself, but…” He trailed off.

“If you don’t mind my asking… how’d you even manage to hook up?”

Corvo gave it some thought, lifting his chin to look off into a starry sky. “The usual way. He kissed me and I liked it.”

Billie snickered and he grinned without turning his head.

“I would’ve expected you to hate him as much as Daud did. Maybe more. You had more reasons to, between Daud and Delilah.”

Corvo shrugged. “I was never sure how much I blamed him for what people did with his magic. If a man stabs someone you don’t blame the knife. Same went for Daud. In the end he was just Burrows’ tool. All the treachery, all the intent, that was on the Regent. I put him down for it.”

He didn’t sound like he regretted it, either.

“What about you?” Corvo asked. “You hiked up Shindaerey Peak to kill him. What made you change your mind?”

Billie hunched forward on the ledge where they sat. “I don’t think I really wanted to in the first place. The night I made it to the quarry I even dreamed of killing him, and the way it felt… I woke up shaking. Couldn’t even eat, that day. All the way down that trail Daud set me on, I was piecing it together, the truth of what he was. Just... the loneliest creature I could even imagine. He came from the streets, like me. And I’ve known what it means to be an outcast, too. The Abbey tells us to blame him for every evil in the world, but evil doesn’t begin or end with magic. Maybe it ends with just… mercy, and an outstretched hand.”

Corvo listened quietly. It wasn’t until a few moments after her voice fell away to silence that he looked at her. “Mercy,” he repeated. “Compassion. From an assassin.” His face looked tired, but then his expression softened and a glimmer of humor shined through.

“We don’t stop being human, after we do what we do. It would make it so much easier if we did.” Billie heard the hard edge in her own voice and wished she’d swallowed her words instead. After what she’d done to this man, who was she to talk back to him? What was her stubborn pride even worth?

Corvo didn’t seem to take offense, but his gaze was inward-turning before he turned his face away, looking back down at the slope of the city below. “Maybe the people who learn these lessons best are the ones who learn them late, and hard. Or maybe you’re just better than you ever knew you were, until that day. I still find it hard to believe _Daud_ taught you mercy.” He couldn’t disguise the bitterness in his voice when he said that name.

“There was more to him than what you knew.” Billie’s tone was milder this time, but she stood her ground. Her feelings for her old mentor were complicated but he deserved this much.

“There always is. Void knows I didn’t want there to be. Void knows I wanted to kill him, thought about it, dreamed about it for months. Him and every Whaler with him.”

“So why didn’t you, really? I heard you went through the district like a ghost. Nobody even saw you. They had you captive, then you were gone, and then so was Daud, not a sound, not a drop of blood spilled. I didn’t even believe it until I heard it from Thomas.”

Corvo arched a brow to hear the story told. “What good would it have done? I could have cleaned the place like I was culling weepers and all it would have gotten me was a tired sword-arm and a pile of bodies. Jessamine would still be gone. And I would be that much closer to being what Daud was. The Loyalists always called me their assassin. I gave up trying to correct them. Burrows was the only man I killed while I served under their banner. But I still told myself, I was the Royal Protector. I still told myself… I was a man with something to protect. I had to protect Emily. What I was doing wasn’t for me. It was for her.

“I wanted to kill him, up until the moment I could have. Then it all went cold. I recognized the dead eyes looking back at mine, the broken spirit behind them. Behind yours.” He was looking at her again with his too-sharp eyes, and there was something flat and dead in them with the memory, hollowed out with grief that was never too far from the surface.

This time it was Billie who looked away, the tightening wince of her expression pulling against the stone of her eye.

“I used to hate myself, for letting Daud go. I used to pace my room at night and curse myself for being soft and weak at the wrong moment. He _deserved_ to die. But Daud was the one who gave Isaac his name, in the end.” He paused, rising to his feet on the edge of the rooftop, his coat billowing in the wind. “Void… to stand there in the dark and somehow find that light inside… how can anyone be so strong?” Corvo looked down at the mask in his hands. “I’m still wondering how much of what I ‘knew’ was wrong.”

Billie was silent for a while, listening to the whistle and shriek of the wind around them, the groaning of the windmills. “I can tell you about him sometime, if you want. I think… this is the first time I’ve talked about him, since he died.” When she glanced at Corvo again she saw him looking back at her. 

“In the end, there was peace for him.” There was sympathy in his voice, if reluctant and conflicted. “It’s strange. I shouldn’t feel _consoled,_ by that. For what it’s worth, I hope you are.” Corvo slid his mask over his face once more. He looked at her through the mask’s lensed eyes. “I’m going h-- going to see Isaac.”

Billie nodded to him. That dark, discordant thing that her Eye saw in flickers was fainter again, and more restful. It was like the past night at the Spector. Another dark thing drawn out of him, like a slug from a bullet wound, and dropped away. “Don’t wear him out, Royal Protector.”

That got a short bark of laughter from the man. “ _I’m_ not the one who needs that warning.”

Billie grinned. Hopefully once this heist was out of the way she’d have a chance to drag Isaac away for some girl talk over an affogato. “That’s my boy.”

Then they were off again, each of them back to their roosts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Reese's perfume](https://www.artisanparfumeur.com/perfumes/travers-e-du-bosphore-eau-de-1243151.html) if you want to know what 'tobacco and rosewater' smells like, because I didn't mean cigarette smoke. It occurred to me this is a very Karnaca-appropriate scent.


	31. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corvo comes home to a warm bed and a warmer lover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: EXPLICIT
> 
> from pretty much start to finish.

Stilton had been right about what would be waiting in bed for Corvo when he got home that night.

Corvo slipped into the apartment through the fire escape. He’d developed a reluctance towards front doors over the years, not quite an aversion but a definite quirk. He hung his coat on its hook, slipped his boots off, and padded silently into the small bedroom to find a few candles still burning. His lover lay sleeping with his head on his arm, an open book beside him fallen from limp fingers.

Void, he was beautiful when he slept.

He looked younger, untroubled. His slack lips were rosy and his black hair in gentle disarray. The covers left his arms and shoulders bare, and his pale skin had a radiant warmth to it. His body was as fine as his face; slender but not gaunt, soft in a way but not without definition. 

Corvo had always thought him beautiful, struck as much by his face as by the depthless eyes set in it when the Outsider had first appeared to him. Of course he was tempting, he’d thought. The Abbey had always said he would be. And yet the Outsider had taunted him, more than seduced. He’d seemed all shadow, smoke, and bitter brine in the days of the plague. His beauty had been like a promise of softness and comfort held forever out of reach, at times almost a mockery of Jessamine in his fair perfection, raven hair against a pale brow.

Then there had been that unexpected glimpse of something vulnerable, something human. Something that wanted very much to be touched. Something he had found irresistible, as he did now a thousand times over. 

He heard Isaac’s breathing change and watched him stir and stretch. “Corvo…” There was a welcoming smile on his lips, sleepy and unprompted. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. 

Corvo unbuckled his holster, but before the belt even hit the floor Isaac was kneeling on the edge of the bed, the whole length of his naked body pressed up against Corvo’s through his clothes, his mouth seeking a kiss.

Corvo felt his cock stiffen so quickly he ached. He pressed his tongue into the mouth beneath his, closed his arms around his lover and clutched at his bare skin. He heard Isaac’s quiet gasp, his subdued moan.

“I owe you for earlier,” Corvo murmured into Isaac’s ear. “Let me spoil you a little.” His hands slid down Isaac’s bare flanks, gripped and squeezed his hips.

Isaac murmured an affirmative and moved back, giving Corvo room to climb into bed. This was the first he’d seen of the new bed and it was immense, almost impractically so. The was only a bit of marginal space left to either side, and a couple feet from the foot of the bed to the closet doors. It took the room from feeling almost bare to feeling over-full, but Corvo liked the feeling. A close, dark space for the two of them. They had eachother -- what else could they need?

Corvo climbed into the bed fully clothed, his eyes on Isaac’s nude body, watching the way his cock lay against his thigh, the way it stirred and started to thicken.

He reclined against the tufted headboard and drew Isaac into his lap, intent on letting his hands browse all that naked skin. They kissed again, Corvo struck once more by his lover’s eagerness, the way he asserted himself with his tongue thrusting into Corvo’s mouth, his hand pressing the center of his chest. He’d been so much more reserved when they’d dreamed together weeks ago. He was still a thoughtful lover, responsive and considerate, and he eased his pace when Corvo did.

“When will you _take_ me?” he murmured in Corvo’s ear. 

“Why the rush?” Corvo’s lips grazed along the top of Isaac’s shoulder.

“I want you. I don’t care about the pain.”

Corvo paused abruptly. A moment of thought, and he pressed a kiss to Isaac’s shoulder. “What do you mean, pain?”

“It always…” Isaac paused, started again. “I know it isn’t _easy_ , but I will never shy from you.”

“That isn’t what I asked you,” Corvo murmured.

Isaac looked at him, then away, drawing back to sit on his heels. His reluctance, his evasion, was already speaking to Corvo in volumes about the answer. There was that bitter taste in the back of his throat and the tightness with it. The shock of cold at the bottom of his stomach. Let them come, Corvo thought, these familiar feelings. Let them break on him like waves on the rocks. His face was calm, his gaze was steady.

Isaac was seeking that stillness on his own. His breathing deep, his eyes lowered, searching the creases of the sheets, the tendons on the back of his own hand as it closed into a fist. “I don’t want what I tell you to change the way you think of me. I don’t want you to look at me and see only these darkest things, these crimes, the way that I was used and I was ruined, but I don’t…” 

His brows drew together, hurt etched in the lines of his face, and Corvo reached for his hands. For a moment, Isaac marvelled at his touch. “ _I do not lie there still._ The altar is empty and crumbling. I am not that child anymore. 

“I was raped. There was pain. There were drugs,” Isaac said, his voice quiet and hoarse, “to make it less. My memories are faded and blurred but I still remember pain. Trying just to grit my teeth and wait for them to finish.”

“The cultists?” Corvo’s voice was low and quiet and steady. Rage blasted through him like a storm wind through a ruined house. There was no one to save and no one to punish, and the man he was here with didn’t need his fury.

Isaac swallowed. “Yes.”

Corvo brought Isaac’s hands together and held them between both of his own. 

“Please don’t think of me like I was. Damaged and soiled, dredged through their filth.”

“Nothing they did could keep a hold on you,” Corvo rumbled. He reached carefully for Isaac’s chin. The other man hesitated for only a moment, but met his eyes with his own, let Corvo’s hand tilt his head. Corvo brushed his fingers across Isaac’s smooth throat with a feather-light touch. “See?”

Isaac gasped so sharply at that caress that Corvo nearly regretted it. Maybe it had been too bold, too much. But Isaac lowered his chin again and stared into Corvo’s eyes, and his gaze was clear and warm.

“When I set foot in the world again, it felt like a waking dream. So many times I thought everything would vanish and I would find myself back in the dark, back in the Void. But when I look at you… when you _touch_ me, Corvo… it is all the rest, all the time before that fades like smoke, as if it never was.”

“Then come here,” Corvo said, and Isaac did.

Isaac leaned against him, lay against him, and Corvo held him fiercely. Isaac’s chin pressed against the bite wound on his shoulder but the pain was as strangely reassuring as it had been the night before. 

“I would promise you everything. Protection, or revenge, but I’ve made so many promises in my life and watched them come to nothing,” Corvo murmured to the man he held. “The future’s not in my hands. I can only tell you my heart is in yours.”

“I know that, Corvo.” Isaac’s lips were so close to his ear, and his voice was soft, sweeter than warm honey. His hand pressed the center of his chest again, rubbing him through his shirt as if he wanted to lay his warm palm upon his heart directly. Corvo heard a sound from his own throat, a hitch in his breathing, and Isaac’s lips were on his in the same instant, his mouth as firm and warm and willing as it had been minutes before. His kisses dripped with that same honey as his voice, blazed with something bright and golden, touched him deeper than his skin and Corvo found his hands reaching up, cupping the back of Isaac’s head to drink it from his mouth.

His lover was the one who had been so hurt. Why was it _him_ who felt like he’d just come in from blasting cold, why did _he_ feel like a castaway washed up on shore, parched, starved, weak to the point of dying. Corvo realized he was shaking and he couldn’t stop. Isaac was kissing him relentlessly, his deft hands unfastening his clothes. 

“I know you, Corvo Attano,” Isaac breathed into his ear. “Always guided by your heart yet seldom ruled by your passions. A keen blade wielded in a gentle hand. I _love_ you.”

Corvo felt laid bare. Isaac was stripping him of his clothes while his words and his touch shucked away some other wrappings he barely understood, things he’d carried all his life and never noticed until his lover had started peeling them away. Things that kept others at a distance, made the world dull and bearable, things that blocked out the cold. A thrill of fear came with the feeling, the hairs on Corvo’s arms standing on end, but the more Isaac took him apart, the more he could feel.

Some muffled part of him, some buried core of his soul -- the part of him he knew Isaac must somehow be reaching for -- was crying out for more.

“Don’t speak,” Isaac murmured to him with that irresistible voice. Plush lips kissed his greying temple, the lobe of his ear, the corner of his jaw. His hands were on bare skin, gliding down Corvo’s flanks, tracing the furrow of muscle that ran from the crest of his hip inward towards his groin. Corvo fumbled after words only to realise that whatever strange magic Isaac was using, speaking would have broken the spell. “The only voice you need is mine, right now,” Isaac said to him. “ _You_ are mine, for now.”   
Isaac traced Corvo’s lips with the pad of his thumb, his touch as light as breath. His face, that perfect face, was so close to his and his hazel eyes were studying him, full of fascination.

“Be still,” Isaac said to him. “Be patient.” Isaac pulled back from him, rose from the bed and gathered Corvo’s clothes from around him. He folded them carefully and put them away, every motion with a deliberate reverence, another step in this strange ritual. While Corvo watched he understood what Isaac had been stripping from him. His rank and status, his role, his duties and obligations, even his history, all the bravado and braggadocio that came with it, all the world’s expectations of him, fair or not, and also all his own. 

Only something essential remained. Something irreducible. Something clean and bright.

When he returned to the bed, Isaac brought a tin canister from the dresser. His graceful hands urged Corvo’s legs apart, stroked and kneaded his inner thighs. Corvo felt himself swelling hard again even before Isaac locked gazes with him, his request unspoken but clear.

Corvo nodded to him and Isaac dragged his fingers through the open tin. His palm brushed Corvo’s balls, rested against the stretch of skin beneath them, and his fingers found his entrance and pressed in.

Corvo moaned for him, quietly. He laid back, still and patient as he’d been bidden, while Isaac worked on him, opening him even further. Corvo lay there with his own breathing, his own pulse loud in his ears against the silence of the night.

Then Isaac was on him. He felt the other man’s erection brush his thigh as Isaac fit himself against him. Corvo felt his body flex around that blunt pressure at his anus, eager for it, welcoming. Isaac was leaning over him, propped on one arm, and Corvo heard his moan as he sheathed himself, saw the look of near disbelief on his face, the startled pleasure. He hadn’t had this before, hadn’t any idea what it would feel like to bury himself in the warm tightness of another’s body.

“Oh, _Corvo_...” Isaac planted his hands on either side of Corvo’s shoulders. He lifted his hips slowly, then pushed in again. Color blazed in his cheeks as he leaned in to seek a kiss, only able to suck at the hollow of Corvo’s throat.

They shifted together, bodies coupled, to let Isaac’s lips reach Corvo’s mouth again. Corvo moaned into the kiss Isaac gave him, a rawness to the sound he didn’t recognize. He only knew that he could feel Isaac’s cock against the place inside him that craved it, craved it more with every beat of his pulse and every breath he sucked into his chest.

“Feel me,” Isaac murmured against his ear again. “Feel my body joined to you. Feel me against the core of you. Feel my pulse inside you, the same as the one that’s pounding in my chest.” Isaac moved on him then, another careful, testing thrust, a sigh of pleasure in his throat. “Feel me seek my pleasure in bringing you yours.”

He felt it. The heat of skin against skin was something alive that enveloped them, something that moved between them as if there were no boundaries at all. Corvo felt himself losing sight of where he ended and where Isaac began. Their rough breathing overlapped in his ears, the rhythm of their pulses, the rhythm of Isaac’s cock driving into him. The arch of his body, the slap of Isaac’s hips against his rear, the mingling moans from both their throats.

There was the feeling of Isaac buried in him, taking him. Isaac was careful, but his confidence was growing as Corvo moaned and sighed and rolled his hips to meet him. He was an open book to his lover all over again. How the past night and day spent with this vibrant, loving, young-seeming man had made him almost forget just what he was, what he could do, the wisdom of centuries stowed behind those striking eyes.

“Close your eyes,” Isaac murmured to him, and Corvo could hear the strain in his voice, the pleasure growing full and ripe. He did. The blackness was like velvet, rich and warm. “When you reach your peak… call my name.”

It wasn’t _obedience_ exactly, it wasn’t submission, yet to do anything else seemed unthinkable. His arms clutched tight around Isaac’s back, feeling his muscles work with the slow motions that rocked them both. Isaac brought his hand between them, wrapped it around Corvo’s shaft and stroked him, the pads of his fingers pressing in against the tender underbelly. Corvo’s legs tensed until they started to shake. Isaac’s hot breath puffed across the bite on Corvo’s shoulder, a quiet hitch in his throat.

They were wound so tight, together. There was a moment just before the precipice and it seemed to stretch on for ages in deafening, impregnable silence. Then, at last, a whine in Corvo’s throat. He choked out his lover’s name, and he heard his own whispered in his ear in the same instant, and everything burst into light behind his eyelids.

They were one.

There was a bliss deeper than what was wracking both their bodies, and in that moment Corvo could feel both his climax and Isaac’s, ringing through them like a chord. Those boundaries between them that had grown so soft and blurred were blasted away, and Corvo could feel him in a way he couldn’t describe even to himself. 

He felt that essential thing, that simple and atomic and indescribable core, the thing with life and feeling, the _soul_. That soul that loved him. It was endless, vast and deep like the ocean, like the Void. He could drown in it, this staggering weight and intensity. Pain, sweetness, everything pushed to its greatest extremes, a poem, an epic, a symphony, a hymn, _a god_...

He could drown. He wanted to. Let this love be the air in his lungs. 

_Isaac_.

The bright flash faded. It felt as if it could have lasted less than a second or most of the night. Their pleasure ebbed, the last heavy spasms giving way to a satisfied shudder, leaving them wet and panting. Isaac collapsed with a quiet groan and Corvo lay limp underneath him.

They drifted. They dozed together in the afterglow.

When Isaac stirred on him, there was still such a quiet over the room. Something he’d done had blessed this night, made it sacred and sheltering... but not entirely solemn, as Isaac nuzzled playfully at Corvo’s chest.

“What did you _do_?” Corvo’s voice was a slurred and sleepy murmur. He brushed a hand against the back of Isaac’s hair. He loved the way it felt against his palm, there where it was shortest.

“I had my way with you, Corvo Attano.” Isaac’s reply was just as slurred, and tinged with giddiness.

“I meant…”

“I know. It was something I thought you needed. The mantle of your selfhood rests more heavily on you than most. You don’t need it when you’re with me.” Isaac slid to his side, an arm and leg still draped across Corvo’s body posessively. “There is magic in the world that doesn’t come from the Void. Magic that belongs to the heart. Most find it by chance, use it by instinct, and lose it naively, never knowing what it was they touched.”

“Is that what this was?”

Isaac nodded against his chest. “I didn’t plan this. I _felt_ you and understood enough to take it further. You’re alright?”

“It was good.” Corvo chuckled softly. “Are you sure you’re not still a god?”

“Only a man. A very lucky one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you're just a little too extra to use straight-up olive oil, the lube of choice in the Isles is a carageenan-based gel that's used in similar applications to vaseline. It's a bit thinner and less greasy, closer to KY. I'm sure everybody was burning with curiosity over that. Carageenan = seaweed, Morley, natural thickening agent, also great if you're making marbled paper.


	32. Interlude 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Talking in the afterglow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just something short and sweet before some plot kicks in. I may not have a ton of words but I have some other stuff to share with you! 
> 
> First off, Queen of the Magpies / yuunobi-art has art of [the Outsider from Interlude 1.](http://yuunobi-art.tumblr.com/post/169796453157/i-dont-keep-a-ledger-corvo-a-present)
> 
> I have a sketch of [Isaac trying on Billie's jacket](http://cinnabarbarian.tumblr.com/post/169932794412/the-former-outsider-trying-on-billies-jacket), which hasn't happened (at least on screen), but anyway.
> 
> And finally I have [a very Isaac-centric playlist up on 8tracks.](https://8tracks.com/trismegistos/who-is-isaac-black)

“Explain it to me.” It occurred to Corvo as the words left his mouth that every encounter he’d had with the Outsider before he’d been _Isaac_ had left him wanting to say that. But now, as Corvo curled his body around his lover, spooning with him in the dark, Isaac could hardly just shoo him out of the Void.

“I think you understand it better than you realize.” Isaac shifted, stretched, and shimmied his body back against Corvo’s, getting indulgently snug. “But… which part?”

“You stripped me and I felt…” Corvo drew a slow breath, thought about it. Even his feelings were hard to pin down. It wasn’t that they’d been complicated, either. They were simple, _too_ simple, things that didn’t have names, or at least not names that carried the kind of weight they should. “I felt lighter. Clean. Like getting out of a wet raincoat.”

Isaac made a quiet sound in his throat. There was some amusement in it, and Corvo realized he was asking Isaac to wrestle with the same difficulties he was running up against himself. “There are many things that make up a whole person, but the soul sits at the center. Wrapped around it are the things that you aspire to be, or fear becoming. Things you consider your obligations and responsibilities. Things related to your place in the world as you see it. Some of them are things you need. Others, mostly burdensome. This outer mantle… as I said to you, yours is heavier than most. The weight of being a leader, a public figure, and worse; a legend in your own time.”

“Worse?”

“Impossible expectations and a history that never rests. I’ve watched you. I know it wasn’t accolades you wanted when you fought your way through the days of the plague.”

“I wanted…” Corvo started then trailed off. He pressed his face against the nape of Isaac’s neck. “...things I would never have again. We can talk on it, if you want, but maybe there’s something else…”

Isaac was turning in his arms then, a brief upheaval as he pulled the covers over them both and nuzzled in under Corvo’s chin. “Forgive me. I know people best by their pain. It was almost all I knew of being human. But yours deserves a rest.”

Everything Isaac had been through, and still it was Corvo’s scars he focused on. There were reasons for that, Corvo speculated. Sometimes it was easier to face another’s troubles than one’s own. And sometimes, when you gave comfort to someone close to you, you gave it to yourself in equal measure. He’d seen that too this night, their care for one another reflected by each of them back upon the other.

“It all rests easier, with you by me.” Corvo felt Isaac’s knee close to his hip, and ended up taking the invitation to tangle their legs together. “I hope you know.”

“I thought so.” Isaac tipped back his head, a slow smile spreading on his lips. “I never realized making love was… I thought of it as…” The smile turned to a thoughtful look while he sought for words. “Like hunger or thirst, just a need to be satisfied, and once done, simply finished. But you’ve made it so much more. Each time we’ve been together I feel like I’m drifting with the clouds for hours. The way I’ve felt today, it was like having sun on my face for the first time all over again. The pleasure is deeper than my skin, and it lingers on me.”

There was so much wonder in his voice, in his face, that Corvo could feel his heart melting. “It’s all so new to you? I almost worried that after all you’ve seen you’d find it banal.”

Isaac shook his head. “Maybe once but no longer. It was all different, from where I sat in the Void. With no desire of my own, watching it never engaged me. It was just a function of the body, with no more appeal to me than watching someone defecate. Yet it was still always in my view, no matter what I wanted. People crying out to me with thwarted desires, lusts grown so swollen and distorted that no one could ever satisfy them. Others screaming for salvation as they were preyed upon.”

“That’s worse than just banality.”

“I knew there was another side to it. It’s why I sought you out in those final days. When I cared to puzzle over love and desire and whatever mystery they present, I could look and see a world teeming with souls who craved nothing more. Among them, so many found what they wanted. So many went to another’s arms, another’s bed and found real comfort there, a true balm for all their pain and loneliness, and that…” Isaac let go of a long, deep sigh then. “...that was where I could no longer bear to look. To see that warmth and know that I would never touch it… It was a black and bitter feeling, and it told me more loudly than words that I didn’t belong in the light.”

Corvo let out a quiet huff of air, his arms around Isaac’s back squeezing him again. “Shows what you know.”

Isaac made a very soft sound at that. A small and quiet laugh. “I think I would have been more bitter by far if I’d known love was so powerful it could erase centuries of desolation as if it had never been. If I’d known just how easily it could’ve soothed my loneliness away. And I find myself even more confused about why the world is as it is, when mankind has everything it needs in one another.” 

When Isaac tipped his head back again, he was smiling once more. “I thought it would take me decades to unravel the mystery of what I need to be happy in this life. I thought my past was a pit I’d spend the rest of my years trying to fill in, without a hope of breaking even. But you were the answer to all of it. When you’re with me like this, I am _untroubled_ , and my mind doesn’t know what to do with itself.”

Corvo could feel his cheeks turning red. There were actually times Jessamine had flattered him this enormously… also in the aftermath of their lovemaking, when he thought about it. But at least then he’d worked up a heavy sweat earning that praise. “Enjoyed me that much, did you?”

Isaac looked up at him in the dark. “I can’t tell if you’re joking with me.”

“I am, a little. You have a very profound way of saying you liked our sex.” Corvo was grinning.

“I was saying more than that, if you were listening.”

“Explain it to me,” Corvo repeated, teasing this time.

“I need you, Corvo Attano, and I love you.”


	33. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some jobs go down easy. Others, not so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Blood, canon-typical violence, and Corvo being Corvo.

Everything went according to plan. The silver carts glided into the canal warehouse after a job as smooth as the rails they’d used to pull it off. Corvo and Billie were crouched atop the final cart in the line, with Billie displacing herself to the switch that shut the heavy doors behind them.

Stilton had some men waiting on the canal beneath them, ready to load the silver bars through a hatch in the warehouse floor onto the coal barge. They’d rake the coal over the silver, then take the barge to Clemente Landing and stow it for the interim. Reese was already helping them find a fence to turn all that silver into coin. Once the Jessamine arrived, no one would question where the funds were coming from.

Corvo helped the smugglers start unloading the silver carts, exchanged a few words with them. He wished he’d had more of a chance to vet the men himself, but they’d come with Stilton’s recommendation, and a later confirmation from Reese Kavanaugh, who’d worked with them before. It would have to be enough.

“I don’t know if my game’s gotten better or this shit’s gotten easier.” Billie Lurk was leaning against a brick column, her arms folded over her chest. “This was smoother than Valentino’s coffee.”

“After the job you pulled at the Michael’s Bank, your game is as good as it gets. Compared to that? This was a cakewalk.” Corvo looked at her, saw a sort of restlessness in her face. It was hard to trust it when things went down easy.

“Most of the credit goes to Aramis. This plan was so tight even Daud would’ve been impressed.”

Corvo grunted an affirmative. “Stilton might’ve missed his calling.”

“Might say the same about you, Royal Protector.”

An observation which hit uncomfortably close to home. 

“We done here?” Billie asked, looking toward the grimy windows.

“Here, yes,” Corvo said, prowling away from where the smugglers were working. “I need to check in with some of my people. Could take a while.”

“Where at? Palace district? If you want an escort…” Billie offered.

“Palace District. If you stop in with Isaac tell him I’ll be along later.”

It was, of course, a lie. Billie gave him a impassive stare, longer than was comfortable, but she either accepted it or she let it pass. Corvo wondered what it was she saw with that dark, stone Eye on her face.

“Don’t keep him waiting too long,” she said. A nod to the barge crew and she pushed off from the column, stalking out through a side door into the dark. By the time Corvo emerged the same way, standing on a narrow catwalk at the edge of the canal, she was nowhere to be seen.

It was time to go kick a bloodfly nest.

Something was happening inside the Abbey. The raid on Battista was only one of a hundred disturbing things that had happened, and that was only counting the things that had reached Corvo’s desk. Battista had repelled them in the end; some of the small towns in the countryside of Serkonos, Gristol, and Morley hadn’t been so lucky. His informants said that Whitecliff had gone from far too lean to being glutted with neophytes, mostly unwilling. They had taken children from all over the Isles, and now they had more than they could feed or clothe. 

Even if the Abbey didn’t start culling those kidnapped children, winter was going to be harsh enough to do the job. Corvo needed to know what was happening, what chance there was of getting the Abbey to reverse course and let those children go. He needed to know if there was any chance, any option at all short of starting a war with Whitecliff.

He had lost most of his informants to the Abbey’s volatility after the coup. Paranoid, worse with every setback they faced, the Abbey had closed ranks. There was no hope of placing any new agents. His only chance had been to look for turncoats, deserters, people horrified by the Abbey’s increasing belligerence, trying to find a way to pull it back from the brink.

His people had found someone, maybe. The Abbey was holding a prisoner beneath their building in Campo Seta: a former Oracular Sister who had deserted her cloister and run. She’d been found preaching heresy on a street corner in Lower Aventa: what heresy the report hadn’t covered in detail. Something about the Abbey being built upon lies.

Why did it still make him uneasy to know beyond a doubt that that particular heresy was true? He had believed those lies for most of his life. He had believed in the Outsider’s malevolence. Believed in the Abbey’s authority, in its necessity. His mother had been devout. As for most of the Empire -- while belief in the Outsider became less common, belief in the Abbey had not. The Strictures were synonymous with morality. But the very tongues that condemned the Lying Tongue were lying as they did so.

And everyone believed them. Everyone had believed them for two hundred years and more. 

Or had they just found it expedient to make it look that way? Did people just nod along because the zealots were telling a story they found useful, a lie that protected them? 

What it came down to was, were people stupid, or were they just utterly corrupt? It was the kind of question he could imagine the Outsider asking, Isaac with his eyes black and a bitter smirk on his lips, knowing just as Corvo knew that both answers were troubling, and both were probably correct for different people at different times.

Maybe this runaway Sister was out of her mind, or maybe she was very much in her right mind. Maybe she could give him answers, information, or maybe not. Either way, if help didn’t come, she would die in a detention room under that building in Campo Seta, and after what he’d been through in Coldridge, the ‘soft and weak’ part of him told him no one deserved to die alone in a cell.

Even Daud had ended better.

The trip across the Alto Mare district was a quiet one. High Cold was still weeks away but there were more nights like this one, clear and windy and carrying the first biting hints of the winter to come. There were still lights on in some of the windows, warm gold shining out onto cold, dark streets, but very few still walked along the bricks and cobbles as the hour grew later. There were guards walking their beats, puffing into cupped, gloved hands to cast their breath back onto their cold faces. A few weary workers dragging themselves home as the pubs shut their doors. From the rooftops it was so far away, a tableau he could watch as if it was a stage play or a silvergraph. 

There had been times Corvo had imagined that was how the Outsider must see the world, and yet then he had thought about it, somehow distance made the questions in his mind ring clearer: Who is that man with the briefcase hanging at the end of his arm, or what does that woman think of while she waits under a streetlamp and watches the canal? Was watching a step towards sympathy, rather than a step away? 

Corvo told himself he should remember to ask, even if he was fairly certain the answer was “yes.”

There was a trip back down to street level and then below, to cross the smaller canal that separated the Campo Seta dockyards from Alto Mare and the rest of Karnaca. There were sewer tunnels that drained into the canal and he used one of those, tearing loose the rusted iron bars with one of Billie’s hook mines. Corvo had bought a few of them from Reese, with a mental note to keep one in reserve to give to Emily when he got back to Dunwall. She’d love it. She’d immediately take it apart to see how it worked.

He emerged from the tunnel in a drainage channel, a wooden walkway cobbled along one side of it with a neglected rowboat tethered to a post. He kept to the shadows and watched a bright whale-oil lamp sweep across the street above; there was a watchtower here, and manned. Likely more guards patrolling. Corvo made what he would consider a reasonable guess, then increased it by a third.

It was roundabout, but when he’d scouted the place earlier in the day, he’d decided the best point of entry would be from the roof. With that tower working, and with the number of patrolling Overseers, street level was far too much of a gamble. But there was a tenement building with a roof that nearly touched the Abbey office. It was abandoned, almost entirely shuttered, but he could get in via a gated-off drainage tunnel, wading through cold water and squeezing through some crumbling masonry into the tenement’s boiler room.

There were three guards on the roof, none of them terribly attentive. He dragged the nearest of the tree behind a chimney as he put him under. The next slumped over at his post after a sleep dart in the leg. The last of them Corvo caught in another unyielding chokehold from behind when he came to try and wake his companion. All three he sat against the housing of some ventilation fans, hidden from view of the door. 

After a moment to check if the alarm was wired to that door, Corvo tried a key he’d taken from one of the rooftop guards. The lock clicked open, and Corvo crept into the Abbey headquarters’ stairwell. 

Corvo could hear conversations as he passed the next floor down, murmurings behind brazen masks. He felt his skin prickle when he realized there were also female voices in the building, more than one. Oracular Sisters? Why would they be here at all, let alone in numbers? If it was a further reaction to the Royal Conservatory incidents, why were they here and not there?

“--have served her right. What other end to this could there be? She was a deserter. She deserted her sisters, her vows, her duty, and evidently all _sense_! Even if she could have been made to recant--”

“If you think that taking the cup, surrounded by her sisters and at peace with the Order, is not in _every way_ to be preferred over--”

“That isn’t what I said, Ianthe, do not put words in my mouth. And in any case we can only wait and see, now. Regret is but a self-indulgence in these times.”

There wasn’t time to linger and eavesdrop. Corvo continued down the stairs, as quickly and quietly as he could. On the entry level, he choked a guard with his arm across his throat and swiped the key to the detention rooms below. He dragged the unconscious Overseer through the door to that last flight of stairs and left him there slumped against a wall.

He found the cell he was looking for, the only one with an occupant. A thin figure huddled under a coarse blanket, back to the room. The key turned in the lock and Corvo stepped past the open door. He reached for the prisoner, huddled on a plain bench with her back to the room. He shook her shoulder, and there was no response. He rolled her onto her back and her eyes were open and staring, her face a mass of black bruises, sticky with blood. She wasn’t even cold yet, but there was no pulse, no breath. She was gone.

He looked down into her battered face, dragging his palm across the woman’s grey streaked hair. He closed her eyes with his fingers.

As he turned to go, he saw that she’d had something to tell him even in death. There was writing on the wall. “HE IS RISEN.”

It was like the shrine Emily had shown him in the crumbling tower by the Hound Pits. The Overseers had left her paper, pen, and ink for a last confession but instead she had painted on the walls. Whales and birds, sun and moon, stars and clouds, rain clouds. The ink ran like tears from the heavy outlines, streaking down the old bricks.

And there were also words he hadn’t seen before, smeared there by ink-stained fingers. “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. It is marvelous in our eyes.”

He’d seen this strangeness in Dunwall only a couple of weeks past, and now he was seeing it in Karnaca painted fresh? He doubted it was the same person, in both places. He needed to find other shrines, see if there was more.

And if there was, there was a logical next step. He needed to find a witch.

He may not have found any answers here, but this was at least a lead. He had a direction to go in, while the Agency kept digging. He had at least some ghost of a plan. Trying to be satisfied with that as he turned to leave the cell, he heard the door at the top of the stairs open, and he froze.

So, ostensibly, did whatever Overseer had just found the downed guard he’d left there. He’d heard a murmur of surprise, and then nothing as he plastered himself against the wall beside the cell’s open door.

It was going to be one of two things from here. Either that guard was going to hit the alarm, or he was going to see if he could catch their intruder unawares. _Please,_ Corvo thought. _Let him be cocky. Please let him think he’s smart._

Overseers almost universally thought they were smart.

When the lone Overseer stepped into the open cell, Corvo grabbed him from behind, arm across his windpipe until the man’s struggling stopped. He dropped him, let him lay where he fell, and stepped over him to leave the room behind him.

He kicked the cell door shut behind him, listened to it lock. Let the man spend the night with what passed for justice with the Abbey. Let that poor woman have a mourner.

Corvo climbed the stairs back to the entry level and heard voices from the building’s lobby. The guards outside must have noticed the lobby was empty, or perhaps they’d realized their friend was taking his time getting back to his post. Either way, a gaggle of Overseers stood talking in the space between the reception desks and the front door. He’d be in plain view of them if he tried to reach the main stairwell.

Time to take a chance on another of Billie’s interesting toys. A hyperbaric grenade. According to Reese Kavanaugh when she’d sold him the thing, it didn’t make much noise, certainly not like a regular grenade. But where it was on the scale between a grenade detonation and quiet enough to go unnoticed, Corvo wasn’t sure. This would be the first time he’d tried one.

He let it cook in his grip for the count of two, then rolled it across the marble floor to the Overseers’ feet. They had a fraction of a second to stare at it in dawning comprehension before it went off, the pressure chamber shattering and a wave of force knocking them off their feet. They lay still, one of them with a concerning trickle of blood from his ears, but they were intact. 

While the detonation made a sound, it was perhaps masked by the whine and hum of the tower operating outside, and the wind ripping through the canal passage beside the building. No alarm was raised, so Corvo crossed the room and entered the main stairwell, at the exact inopportune moment an officer was rounding the corner from the second floor.

Corvo fought the instinct to freeze, to pause. If he rushed the man before he knew what was happening, he still had a chance. Unfortunately, the Overseer’s reflexes were good. He dodged back out of the stairwell, shouting in surprise. By the time Corvo reached the top of the stairs, there were klaxons blaring all around, voices raised in alarm.

It was amazing sometimes. Jobs like this could either be clean as a whistle, or a greasy dumpster fire, and there was just one tiny, chance mistake separating the two.

He’d just made that mistake. 

In the second floor hallway, two Overseers were standing with pistols drawn, an inscrutable Oracle behind them with her ceremonial blindfold across her face. Guns fired as Corvo dodged across the hall into a small break room, splinters flying from the wooden doorframe. There were windows, thankfully, and he managed to wrench one open before the Overseers reached the doorway, only to find the light from the watchtower outside shining right in his face.

The light turned red.

Corvo threw himself to the floor and covered his head with his arms.

A volley of explosive rounds flew over him, striking the doorway he’d just entered from. Debris flew everywhere, and for a moment the only sound Corvo knew was the ringing in his ears. It was a fairly safe bet that the people pursuing him were down for the count. And the window, certainly, was wide open. 

He had to be fast. He got his legs under him and started to move, throwing himself out onto the balcony and rolling. The tower could see him, he had to be out of its view before it was done readying another volley. There was some sting at his ribs, an ache at his shoulder, but the pain was only a nuisance. He couldn’t let it slow him down.

He hit a railing, vaulting up onto it, preparing to jump to another balcony when the light turned red again. His whole body tensed as it left the railing. He was as good as hit. If he didn’t take a direct hit he’d be thrown one storey down to the street, maybe a little more, all hard stone below him from here, and a few armed Overseers ready and waiting to finish the job.

His boots hit the concrete of the other balcony, heels skidding while he found his balance. The light was gone. Corvo dared a glance back over his shoulder. The tower was dark, inoperative. And on top of it, a slender, dark figure was tossing a full tank of whale oil down into the street.

Billie Lurk.

Corvo took the chance she’d given him and he ran. Another balcony leap as Overseers emerged from the windows behind him. And then one more running leap, legs kicking and churning through the air for every inch of distance he could get. He plunged into the canal.

It was a cold so shocking he couldn’t even feel it at first. Then there was an ache in every fiber of his body as he strained towards the sewer tunnel at the canal’s opposite edge. He made the swim, pulled himself gasping and shivering onto the sewer’s paved walk. And without a sound to announce her, not even a second behind him, there was Billie Lurk, hauling him deeper into the shadows.

“Come on, Royal Protector. On your feet.” Her arms were hooked under his armpits as she tried to put him back on his feet. He heard himself groan sharply. That ‘nuisance’ pain in his ribs was stabbing through him. That ache in his shoulder had become something broad and hot, throbbing along with his rapid pulse.

“It’s hard to see--” 

Corvo heard her complain as she leaned over him. If she was looking for signs of injury, seeing blood on a dark wet coat in very low light wasn’t going to be easy. But as her words cut short he saw the Eye on her face pulse with red light. 

“Fuck,” he heard her say, quiet and sober. An instant later she was shoving an open vial of S&P into his numb, fumbling fingers.

“Doesn’t feel that bad,” he choked out, drinking. He could only manage a swallow before he was gasping for breath, somehow unable to get enough air.

“Well it _is_. We need to get you to Reese. Drink as much as you can.”  
He took another drink and came up coughing. There was something warm and wet on his lips. He wiped at them and his fingers came away bloody.

Corvo forced himself upright at last, his back braced against the tunnel wall. Billie looped his uninjured arm over her shoulders, her arm around his back. “I’m not strong enough to carry you,” she said. “We’re going for the nearest carriage. Just focus on staying upright and staying _conscious_ if you ever want to see Isaac again.”

“Isaac…”

It went without saying that he wanted nothing more.

She moved them with her magic, mainly. The Void felt familiar, but the way she used it somehow didn’t, and the way she took them from one place to the next didn’t feel very much like the way it had when he’d been able to do it himself. He’d always thought of it, what the Whalers had called ‘transversals’, as travelling from one place to another very, very fast. Impossibly fast, in the blink of an eye. But Billie’s version was more like diving beneath the surface of reality and emerging at another point in a single instant. 

He acclimated quickly, his thoughts drifting to diving whales, or his mother’s embroidery needle. Diving, rising. His own consciousness, ebbing, shuddering awake as he coughed and strained for air. It was cold and he was only getting colder. He felt _tired_ , bone weary, like the morning after the Boyle party when he’d been days without rest.

They made it to the carriage. He watched Billie’s stone hand grip the brass lever.

The next thing he knew was light, and voices shouting, and his fingers gripping stubbornly at something. A sleeve, a wrist. Fingers around his own wrist in return. “Let him stay,” he heard himself murmuring, not even sure what he meant, only how important it was. “Let him stay, let him stay…”

“ _You_ stay! Corvo, I’m here, _stay with me_! Listen to me, _look at me_ , the Void won’t have you yet!”

Isaac was holding him, an arm across his chest, and when Corvo looked down he saw red blood on his white shirt. But that arm across his chest, that body against him, felt warm. The feel of him, his smell and the sound of his voice made everything else retreat. How could anything be wrong, if they were together? “Work around him,” Corvo slurred. 

“He’s cold as the Void, Reese! Don’t send me away!”

“Fine, while I’m trying to fight with you he’s still losing blood. Just keep that hand, keep him awake. Billie, get those clothes off him, just cut them, we don’t have _time_...”

There was a tight, warm grip on his hand, a familiar face looking into his. Corvo looked into those hazel eyes and saw _fear_ there. It seemed so strange, to see fear in the lines of that face. He thought of him in the Void, unassailable as he was alienated and alone. He’d had a certain confidence in what and who he had been. Was it more complicated now, strange and new, for Isaac to find out who he was as a part of the world, surrounded by friends? 

“Love… it’s alright now. Everything is alright,” Corvo soothed. 

He felt Isaac’s hand squeeze his harder. He felt his knuckles crack. 

“You don’t know your own strength,” he chided gently. 

Then blackness rushed in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was in high school my art class took a field trip to see a huge Keith Haring exhibition at a local museum. His paintings conveyed a tremendous amount of raw emotion, and some of them, from late in his life when he knew he was dying, made use of paint drips to show his anguish in a very literal way. I cried because it was like looking at the tears on someone's face, too intimate and genuine to have any distance from. Picture that, on the wall of the captive woman's cell. Her name was Agnes.
> 
> Please forgive if updates and replies slow down for a little while. Last night I had to euthanize my cat. He was my dearest cat for his whole long life and I miss him. I wish it had been longer.


	34. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corvo gets told off by literally everyone.

Isaac woke to the feeling of a calloused thumb brushing across his knuckles.

He opened his eyes and the day was late, red light streaming in through the windows at the front of the room. But most importantly, Corvo was sitting up in bed with a pillow propped behind his back. Gazing at him with soft, tired eyes, Corvo squeezed Isaac’s fingers in his hand. 

“Corvo…” His voice came out a croak, a lump in his throat rising too fast. He was laying on another cot he’d pushed up beside the one Corvo was laying on. After Reese had done all she could, Isaac had settled in to wait and finally, fitfully, to sleep.

Fortunately it hadn’t been too long.

Isaac pushed himself upright, watching as Corvo gestured towards a pitcher of water on the far side of his bed. Isaac gave him a full glass and Corvo chugged it down, ending with a gasp and a raw-sounding cough. He smiled though.

“Better,” Corvo rasped. “How long was I out?”

“Most of a day,” Isaac said, sitting himself down on the edge of Corvo’s bed. “Billie brought you in just after midnight.”

Corvo reached for Isaac’s hands. “I’m sorry.”

On some level, Isaac was angry with him. Still not as angry as he should be, he thought, but he also felt that trying to work himself into the appropriate furor would be a pointless exercise. He held Corvo’s hand in both of his, breathing out a deep sigh of relief. 

“We’re going to have words,” Isaac said. “Right now, in this moment, I’m only glad to have you back.” He raised that hand in his, kissed his knuckles. “If you think you can eat, you should. As much as you can.”

“Then you’ll be glad to hear I’m starving. More water, please.”

Isaac gave Corvo a slanted smile and poured him another glass. “Let me go tell the others you’re up.”

As he passed the glass to Corvo, Corvo caught his wrist and pulled gently. “Not just yet.”

Isaac guessed his intentions, sat back down on the bed, reaching for Corvo to try and stop him when the injured man adjusted his position and grunted with pain. It ended with Isaac between his legs, leaning against Corvo’s chest with his arms around him. Corvo kissed the crown of his head and Isaac closed his eyes tight, listened to the heart beating slow and steady just beneath his ear.

“Never again, Corvo,” he said, hearing the hitch in his own voice.

“I’ll do my best,” came the tender reply.

“Do _better_.”

“I will. I’ll do better.” Corvo’s voice was patient and mild.

At least the odds were good that Corvo wouldn’t end up back in the fray while he was still recovering from these wounds. Isaac could let his worries go under the pretense that he was just putting them aside for later. And Corvo’s hands were stroking his back and shoulders, a tender warmth he could feel through the fabric of his shirt, a welcome improvement from how cold they’d felt the previous night. 

Isaac reached up to tangle his fingers in the loose waves of Corvo’s hair. “The passage of time can still feel strange to me,” he mused. “The rhythm of things is different from within the Void, outside of time but not entirely untouched by it. Events passed as chapters in a story, one pivotal moment to the next. I would be lying if I said the years passed quickly. There was an eternity in every moment, the thunder of an entire world clamoring for all they didn’t have. But now time is constant and steady, and all those moments are woven into it, colorful threads in a rich tapestry. I don’t mean to say that life is too short. I don’t resent mortality. But I will tell you that I will always want more of your time.”

Corvo’s silence told him, just as the press of Corvo’s lips to his forehead, that he was thinking. He was letting those words sink home. “You know that I have my duties.”

“I know you think I’m something to balance against them. Which is why you told me nothing of your plans.” His tone turned flinty, but he didn’t move from his spot, half-laying against Corvo.

“I thought I could spare you from worrying over me.”

“Sitting at the window and fretting like a soldier’s bride, is that the only alternative you could see?” Isaac heaved a frustrated sigh and finally did sit up, frowning at Corvo. “Do you think that because I don’t run rooftops and swing a sword, I can’t be of any help to you? Have you forgotten who I am?”

He saw Corvo’s cheeks flush at the rebuke, another welcome indication that the man had some blood in him again. Yet with a moment of thought Isaac couldn’t help but let his irritation slip away.

It was easier to think, now that the crisis was past. And with thought, it became clear that Corvo had acted according to his nature, to such a degree that it was actually disarming. _Of course_ Corvo had tried to _protect_ him.

All Corvo’s life, the man had been drawn towards the role he’d eventually found himself in: the Royal Protector. Corvo’s strength, his cunning, his skill with a blade, became something with meaning only when they served someone he cared about. His world had to have a center, and it had never been himself. But Emily Kaldwin could take care of herself quite capably, these days. 

“Isaac, I…” Corvo frowned, but the expression was inward-turned. “I won’t put you in harm’s way. Ever. I can’t work if I don’t know you’re safe.”

That only confirmed it. Isaac took Corvo’s hand in his. Elegant, even if callused. Strong but gracefully shaped, Corvo’s skin so much darker than his own. Isaac traced the shape of the mark that had once been branded on the back of Corvo’s hand. “Place some faith in me, my dear, my _impossibly_ dear Corvo.”

“You have a right to be angry with me,” Corvo said.

“Be angry at a fish for swimming?” Isaac said. “If I’d been thinking of anything but our next time in bed I would’ve seen it coming. Don’t _repeat_ this. No secrets between us.” He looked Corvo in the eyes as he awaited his answer.

Corvo looked back with an unflinching gaze. He nodded. “No secrets.”

Isaac knew him well enough to accept his word and be satisfied. The same devotion that had brought this about would hold him to it. 

But then he saw a slow smile creeping across Corvo’s face. “Please forgive me for driving you to distraction.”

Isaac brushed Corvo’s hair back from his forehead and kissed him there. “It’s a pleasant distraction. Don’t apologize.”

He felt Corvo’s arms around his waist, then, pulling him back into his lap with more strength than he expected the injured man to have. Another muted, pained grunt from the effort, but Isaac buried it with a firm kiss on Corvo’s mouth, stretching out against his body. 

The two of them were kissing hungrily when they heard the latch turn and the door open. 

“You might want to give that rest,” said Reese, watching them with a tired smile. “I don’t think he’s got enough blood for you to be sending it all south right now.”

Isaac sat up again, chagrined, folding his hands in his lap. Reese put a hand on his shoulder as she came over to the side of the bed.

“Honestly? I can’t believe you’re awake already,” she said, looking at Corvo. “Not gonna complain. Think you could go for some supper? Billie’s cooking.”

Both of them answered yes. Reese left Corvo with a vial of S&P to work on in the meantime. In less than an hour, the others gathered in the clinic with plates of food, Billie, Reese, and Valentino pulling up chairs to eat around an old card table they set up beside the bed.

There was clear exhaustion on everyone’s face, but with Corvo awake, spirits were high. Even Valentino’s uncharacteristically harrowed expression eased at seeing Corvo awake and on the mend. 

“He gave you a fair portion of his own blood,” Isaac informed Corvo. Billie had stolen the sanguine infusion apparatus from the Spector club, pump included, which was no small feat. They’d used it to replenish some of the blood Corvo had lost, with Valentino their best guess for a match.

“I think I still came out the better for it. Do you have any idea what the Agency would do to me if the Royal Protector died on my watch, so to speak?”

Isaac waited a moment for Valentino to continue, but then shook his head mutely when he didn’t.

“ _Neither do I_ , and I hope you realize how troubling that is!” He sat down on the clinic’s second bed, drinking from a bottle of Gristol cider. Isaac realized he’d seen the look on Valentino’s face elsewhere.

“Does he remind you of anyone right now, Corvo?” Isaac asked. “Try picturing him without the moustache.”

Corvo had to think a moment before he realized. “Oh.” As it dawned on him, so did something else, and he looked at Isaac with conternation in his eyes. “You’re telling me _I_ did this?”

Valentino was wearing an expression more commonly seen on Jameson Curnow’s face.

“I’m suggesting that if you have assistants, you might consider letting them _assist_ you.”

Corvo assessed the position he’d put Valentino in while Reese handed him a plate of food. It was a recipe Billie had picked up from a former crewman, a young woman from Wei Gon -- cubes of blood ox steak seared in a hot pan with broccoli and garlic, in a savory brown sauce. “There’s plenty more if you want it. You need to eat hearty over the next couple weeks. Dark green vegetables, especially. It’ll help replenish the blood you lost.”

“Speaking of,” Billie interjected. “You wanna tell us what was important enough to cancel your honeymoon over?”

Isaac gave Billie a pointed look. Of course she’d put it that way. She smirked a small, tacit apology as she handed him his plate, with cubes of tender bean curd instead of beef. 

“Stopping a war, maybe,” Corvo answered. He stabbed at a morsel on his plate, devouring his food as if he hadn’t eaten in a week.

Billie waited for Corvo to elaborate and exchanged looks with Isaac when he didn’t. “A war?” she prompted. “With the Abbey, you mean?”

Corvo swallowed his mouthful, then nodded. “With Whitecliff. You know Battista wasn’t the only place they raided. They’ve been taking children. Families have been hiding them from the Overseers. The Abbey failed against the Coup, and now it’s as if the populace just doesn’t see a purpose to them anymore. So the Vice Overseers have been taking children by force. Battista repelled that raid, but there are small towns around the isles that the Abbey has more or less wiped off the map. They’ve got children, now. More than they can feed, and winter’s nearly here.”

There had been other paths. Isaac had seen this future before he’d been freed from the Void, but it hadn’t been the only possibility. There had been other outcomes for the Abbey, for the Empire, most of them more moderate. He sighed, laying down his fork as his appetite fled. Of course they’d chosen this one. The one with the helpless dying by the thousands.

“I’m trying to stop it,” Corvo continued. “I need to know what’s happening inside the Abbey, but nearly all my informants are gone. They were holding a sister from the Oracular Order who deserted weeks ago. I tried to reach her, but she was dead when I got there. There’s got to be a way, there are other routes I can try…”

“You’re in no condition for any more exploits like the last one,” Isaac said, hoping he was stating the obvious.

Corvo frowned, reluctant to admit that. “I’ll heal. In the meantime, I’ll have the Agency look for any other sources I can tap. And …” He trailed off, reluctant to share so much. “The dead Sister left a lead I need to follow. One I can’t share with the Agency.”

Valentino looked impatient. He took another swig from his bottle of cider. “With all due respect, my Lord Protector, if you’ve said this much then I would think you’re inclined to trust _my_ discretion, at least. Please… share what you know. You might find us useful.”

“It’s not your usefulness that’s ever been in question.” Corvo glanced around at the room, and it was clear he was addressing all of them. “This isn’t your job, and it isn’t your fight. The responsibility’s mine.”

Billie snorted. “That is some bullshit, Royal Protector.”

Reese was nodding to Billie, her lips pursed in dry amusement. 

Corvo glowered, more annoyed than truly angry, Isaac thought. “I don’t see why.”

“Look around you. Do you think that what you did last night didn’t have consequences for everybody in this room? None of us slept last night. Isaac was out of his mind with grief. Reese and I worked the whole night through, and Valentino’s down a couple pints and I don’t mean fucking cider.”

Corvo breathed out a heavy sigh that ended in a pained cough. “This didn’t work out how I planned.”

“That much is obvious,” Isaac said. “And it means your mission will only get harder from here.”

The others all had their eyes on Corvo while he regarded them, stoic, his eyes intense. He shook his head in surrender. “I’ve got no options left. I can’t promise you compensation, and I can’t guarantee your safety. But… I’ll keep you informed. I promised Isaac, no more secrets.”

“Then tell us. What’s this lead?”

“Writing on the wall of her cell. Words I’d seen before. ‘He is risen.’ I think we all know who they mean.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lagging behind because of injury / loopy with pain medications. For muscle spasms ironically located more or less where Corvo got shot.
> 
> [I managed to draw y'all something though.](http://cinnabarbarian.tumblr.com/post/170580537587/cinnabarbarian-really-right-in-front-of-my)


	35. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the dark of the early morning, Billie and Corvo have an awkward heart-to-heart.

Billie knew. She’d seen the writing on walls in alleyways and scratched into the flaking paint on the sides of dumpsters. She’d seen it written proud above derelict shrines. And Corvo had seen it in a cell under an Abbey office, scrawled there by the hand of a dying oracle. 

They all knew who it meant. Even Isaac, perhaps especially Isaac, but none of them knew how that moment on Shindaerey Peak had been witnessed far and wide.

“The dreaming and the dying,” Isaac had said, his voice soft. He’d said that some dream more deeply than others -- the Oracles and the witches of the world. But he’d said that at the moment he regained his name, it was possible that every dreaming eye was on them. 

Now Billie was sitting up in bed, Reese beside her sleeping soundly, exhausted after working through the previous night and morning. But sleep was eluding Billie, even after she’d run herself just as hard. This occult bullshit was catching up with her.

Maybe looming over her was a better way of putting it. She looked at her ‘arm,’ just some straps and carved whale ivories sitting on the nightstand, but she could feel the Void in her. The stone of her hand, cold but alive, felt like a spectre, weightless and invisible but still present on the end of her missing arm. She could feel the knife, its edges nestled somewhere deep in her throat, somewhere behind her heart, somewhere low in her gut, a presence that waited, a shivering unease, a quiet menace.

Though it had felt different, lately.

Billie wasn’t sure if it was just that she was getting used to it or if, somehow, it had simply become _hers._

She remembered the moment Isaac had given it to her. Those black shards had sunk into her, as if all the ragged wounds of grief opened by the news of Daud’s passing had made a place for them. It had sat restless inside her soul, shivering as it had in the Outsider’s hand, and the look she’d seen on his face in that moment wouldn’t leave her thoughts. The half-snarl he’d regarded the knife with, the anger and disgust.

She had carried it to back to the Dreadful Wale, a prize she’d sought but never wanted.

It was different now. Maybe it was becoming part of her in a deeper way, colored with her thoughts and her intentions. She wanted to hope that was it. Maybe it was part of her as the arm was, an extension of her will and her body.

She listened to the sound of footfalls coming up the stairs; heavy, slow, a bit of a stagger. Their wounded Royal Protector, who should hardly be out of bed. Yet if he had the strength for it, it was basically a good thing. They’d left the apartment door open in case he or Isaac needed anything in the night. Valentino had returned to his own bed, but Isaac wouldn’t budge from Corvo’s side, which was hardly a surprise.

Billie slipped out of bed, into a shirt. She lit the kitchen light just as Corvo Attano appeared in the door frame, holding his injured side.

“Can’t sleep?” she asked.

He shook his head, slouching into the kitchen to grab some fruit from a bowl on the counter. “Slept the day away,” he rumbled. 

Corvo bit into a large apple and started reaching for a bottle of whiskey. Billie stopped him, her hand on his wrist. “Reese says no alcohol. It thins the blood, apparently.”

He gave her a bleary stare but didn’t press. Instead he grabbed the entire fruit bowl to deposit on the table, pulled back a chair and sat down gingerly, careful of his wounds. “Billie,” he said. “Care to talk?”

Billie sat down across the table from him, elbows resting on it. If she’d still had her right arm her arms would’ve been crossed in front of her. “What’s on your mind?”

That got a crooked smile from the man. “You are. You saved my life. Maybe twice. Maybe three times if we count the Coup.” He took another bite of his apple, chewed and swallowed. “I can’t say part of me wasn’t Void-bent on trying to hate you, no matter what I did. _Trying_. But I think it’s giving up.”

“That’s… Well…” Billie wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m grateful. I am, but… I’m sorry if it’s going to take me a little to catch up. I’m still a little…”

“I know.” His voice was quiet, gentle like she’d never heard, and she realized immediately why Isaac was so stuck on the man.

He knew, and he wasn’t going to make her stomp down on her pride enough to say it. The way she felt afraid. The way she was always ready to run when he was in the room.

“That’s why I wanted to talk,” Corvo continued. “I’ve been stupid. Last night made that much clear. We need to trust each other. That’s not going to happen between a couple of strangers with a past like ours. Not on its own.”

Billie gave that a moment of thought. “Yeah. This would go easier with whiskey.” But if Corvo couldn’t drink, it seemed rude to do so in front of him.

He flashed a quick grin. “Guess we’ll do it dry.”

Billie covered her mouth to keep from shrieking a laugh. “What would Emily say, if she heard her dear father talking like that?”

“She’d put her fingers in her ears and walk away. Singing loudly.”

“Speaking from experience, sounds like.”

“A bit,” Corvo chuckled. “But… you understand what I’m getting at?”

Billie shrugged. “That we can’t stay strangers. Time we broke the ice.”

He nodded. There was warmth in his eyes. It reminded her of the day they’d shared breakfast, him and Isaac sitting side by side. “Time we broke the ice,” he echoed. 

Then they both fell into silence, their gazes falling away and awkwardly browsing the empty table between them.

Corvo finished his apple and moved on to an under-ripe banana. They sat in the light of the kitchen’s overhead lamp, listening to the clock tick on the wall.

Corvo coughed into his fist and winced. “This isn’t my strong suit.”

“Don’t look at me,” Billie said. “Bonding is best done shitfaced. Learned that back with the Whalers.”

“You’re not wrong,” Corvo answered. “Maybe we need to focus on things we have in common.”

“Isaac,” Billie said.

Corvo nodded. “Isaac.”

Billie leaned against the table, sighing. “Don’t put him through another night like that again. He’s been through things neither of us can understand, but… that was going to cut _deep_ if he lost you. I can’t believe…” She couldn’t help frowning, consternation on her face. “Two days was all you gave him. Just two and then _that._ That was cold.”

It hurt to hear it. It showed on Corvo’s face. “None of this went down the way I wanted it to. Words they’ll put on my tombstone.” He sighed, reaching for a bruised pear. “I’ll make it up to him. Al the time he wants, everything he asks of me.”

“While Reese was working on you I spent some time with him. Told him you never stop thinking about him.”

“You’re a good friend to him. Reese and Valentino, too. It’s barely been a month and he’s built this much of a life already. When I went under, I remember thinking… you’d catch him if he fell. He’d stand up again.”

“I’d rather not have to.”

“I wouldn’t mind being the one who catches him, once or twice.”

Billie thought for a moment as the topic seemed to run dry. “So. How’s your daughter?”

“Overworked, but well. Reconstruction in Dunwall’s moving forward and I think she’s proud of the progress. I can always see it in her face when she gets good news.” He paused. “She’s probably broken into my safe by now. Should be getting a telegram soon. She’ll know about Isaac.”

Billie’s eyebrow arched. “She met him in the Void. He told me she had his Mark. What’s she think of him, if you know?”

“She told me she didn’t think he was what the Abbey says. I said I felt the same. It was difficult to know more, with the way he was, there and then gone in a flash. But he told her about how he died, and she told me. She had sympathy for him.”

Billie nooded. “Sounds like Emily. I heard her talking to Anton once at night, asking him about Delilah. She didn’t just want to destroy her, she wanted to understand. She wanted to know why. She said she couldn’t believe that somebody whose paintings were that beautiful could really be all bad.”

Corvo nodded. “She’s never been one to settle for easy answers. She’s like her mother that way. I think you should know… she’d be happy to see you again, when it comes down to it. I talked to her about you when we drafted your pardon. I couldn’t tell her all the details, but she didn’t fight me on it.”

“I still don’t understand why you did it. I appreciate it, but I don’t know. I helped Isaac but that doesn’t mean I’ve done no wrong.”

“I needed to give you a reason to talk to me.” Corvo’s expression turned impassive for a moment while he thought. “You were instrumental in dismantling Delilah’s coup, even when you had every reason to stay out of it. You went to Shindaerey Peak following Daud’s last wishes but instead of killing the Outsider, you returned his name and brought him out of the Void. You do what you believe is right, and you don’t let anything keep you down. But this wasn’t just on principle. This is me believing I’ve found the right person for the right job.

“I need you to be my successor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> health bar low? eat a bowl of fruit! You can assume that offscreen he turned the tap off and on a few times.


	36. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billie and Reese discuss plans for the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Explicit.
> 
> past time for some more of these two, don't you think? Sometimes you can fall in love in a flash. Other times it takes a little while to realize there's somebody you just can't live without.

Billie was still at the breakfast table when morning came, not with Corvo Attano but with a cup of hot coffee and a large bundle of confused thoughts and mixed feelings. Reese found her there a couple of hours after dawn, as she walked into the kitchen with a stretch and a yawn.

She looked at Billie with sympathetic eyes. “You didn’t sleep?”

“A couple hours, I guess,” Billie said.

Reese made a disapproving noise, but not really a scolding one. “What’s on your mind?” She picked up the empty fruit bowl from the table and moved it back to the counter, then set a kettle of water on the stove and stoked the fire beneath it.

“You’re not going to believe me. I’m still not sure I believe it myself.”

“Better just lay it on me, then.”

“The Royal Protector offered me a job. _His_ job.”

Reese stared, every bit as incredulous as Billie herself felt. She pulled back a chair and plopped herself into it, folding her hands on the table. “He’s a little bit crazy, isn’t he,” she said.

“I’m thinking it comes with the territory,” Billie answered.

“So, he really means it, you think?”

“He’s not one for kidding around. It’s not immediate or anything,” Billie said. “And he said I might find it easier to work without the ‘official’ appointment to the court but some kind of special arrangement with the Empress and the spy agency. But he said he thinks I’m the best there is at whatever it is we do. He said the Empire needs that.”

The kettle on the stove whistled. Reese rose out of her chair to prepare a pot of fragrant black tea. Billie could see the outline of her slender body through the fine cloth of her shirt, a soft silhouette in morning sunlight.

“But what’s the Empire to you? Until this past week it wanted your head in basket. What’s your stake in this game? I guess there’s coin in it, but you’ve got plenty of ways to get that, and I’m not sure anyone should be married to their job quite the way our Royal Protector is.”

Billie nodded as Reese returned to the table with the teapot and a pair of mugs. “And there you have it. Everything I’ve been mulling over since he came up here at four in the morning and ate all your fruit.”

Reese chuckled at that. “He sure is bouncing back.” She poured for both of them, dropping a cube of sugar into her own mug.

Billie drank from her own mug, a bit of a slurping sip from how hot the tea still was. “So, any advice?”

Reese gave her a level look across the table. “What do _you_ want?”

Billie frowned. Straight to the hard part. “I keep thinking of these powers. Thinking about what I can do with them, what I’m _meant_ to do, and I think… right there in the middle of it all couldn’t I do more? 

“I used to think it didn’t matter who ruled. It was always going to be some pampered aristocrat lording it over all the rest of us. But when we assassinated the Empress, we watched the city falling apart around us and we _knew_ we’d played a part in that. I saw the same thing again with Delilah’s coup. Thousands of lives just crushed under her heel.

“Maybe the Kaldwin dynasty is nothing to me. But… I know Emily. And I know there’s a world of difference between somebody like her, who’s trying to make this world better, and people like the old Regent before her, or people like Luca Abele. Parasites who crowd in around the throne just looking for their chance.”

Reese listened patiently, and finally spoke. “Sounds to me like you want this. What you’re saying about your powers… it makes sense to me, Billie. It just _fits_ in a way I can’t really explain. But if I’m being honest? The things you do are going to change the world whether you’re in Dunwall or Karnaca or anywhere. It’s just part of who you are.”

Maybe if she’d been less exhausted, Billie would’ve blushed. But at the moment, she just felt herself weighing the truth of that with a strange detachment. She felt it again, what she’d felt returning from the Shinadaerey North Quarry. The sense that she’d thrown a rock into a still pond and she was watching the ripples propagate. There’d been other stones thrown, now. Hollows closed, and lives saved. 

The pond wasn’t so still any longer.

Billie looked up from her mug of tea. “If I go to Dunwall, will you come with me?”

Reese puffed out air through her lips as if the answer should’ve been obvious. “I’ve got no roots in Karnaca. If you want me along, I want to be there.”

“You’re sure? I know you wanted to work at Addermire--”

“I can earn my Doctorate in Dunwall, too. Plans change, and that’s alright.”

Billie wasn’t sure why it felt like the rim of her lower eyelid was burning. Was she just that tired? But then she saw Reese pushing back her chair again, her heart in her eyes as she moved around the table to put her arms around Billie’s shoulders.

“Baby, let’s get you back into bed…”

Billie let Reese usher her back down the hall to the bedroom. It was something she was far from used to, this feeling of being taken care of, being sheltered by another person’s warmth. She was used to standing on her own, not bitter about it but proud. She was the strong one. She could help the people who needed her, and she didn’t need anything back. She’d always managed. 

Billie sat on the edge of the bed with Reese’s arm around her back. “I was just so used to being alone. I thought, that’s how it was always going to be, and I was getting by so it was fine. I was fine.”

Reese held her hand, thin fingers curling around it and squeezing. “I used to love being on my own. Only my own damned problems to look after. My own home, my own things, I could do whatever I felt like. If I wanted to spend my last coin on a bottle of sparkling wine and some new lacey lingerie, that was nobody’s business.”

Billie chuckled. “Like those purple ones with the little bow on the front? I love those.”

Reese was beaming. “Yeah, me too. But you know… when you’re here to share it with, it’s all better. I’m not just living through one day to get to the next one. I’m thinking about the next time I get to see you smile, or make you laugh…”

“...thinking about the way you kiss my eyelid,” Billie said. “The way you pull the brush through your hair too hard in the morning and cuss it out.” She laughed to herself. It was so obvious. It had been for a while. But how much of her life in the past decade had been banking on the transience of things like this? Hold them while you can, watch them slip through your fingers like sand, and move on. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.” The sob in Reese’s voice surprised her. The other woman had her face buried against Billie’s neck, and Billie had her arms around Reese as fiercely as Reese was holding onto her. 

Billie kissed her hair, kissed her temple. She felt Reese’s lips on her neck, on the corner of her jaw while they lay back together. Her hand slipped under Reese’s shirt, gliding over her smooth, taut belly. Her fingertips traced the tender curve below her small breasts, and Billie saw Reese breath out through parted lips with one half-open eye.

She drew her fingers back down the center of Reese’s chest, the gentle indentation along her stomach. Past her navel, to the satin-embellished waistband of her panties, over that smooth fabric to where the heat of her body was even stronger, only able to draw the most teasing stroke along the cleft of her sex with that cloth still drawn tight across it. Reese’s breath shivered, her legs opened.

Billie’s fingers skimmed their way along a scalloped leg-band. “Let me see if I can guess without looking. These… they’re the black ones.” Her searching fingers traced the crease of Reese’s thigh, danced over a lace panel trimmed with ribbon. “Yeah. The ones with the tiny peach dots.”

“Got it in one,” Reese said, breathless.

Billie’s fingertips teased across the satin covering her again. They teased lower, finding a spreading spot of wetness. She looked down Reese’s body to her slim thighs, knees bent and apart, and loved the way her own hand lay claim to that tender place between them. Finally she drew her hand back and slipped it under that satin and lace.

Reese’s clit was slick and stiff under her fingertips. She was moaning out loud as Billie stroked her, careful and slow. Her hips pressed upward, rocked forward, and Billie could feel the final throb and twitch as she cried out and came. She was beautiful in the aftermath, panting and rosey, her gorgeous eyes dark.

Billie found herself at least as wet, at least as ready. Reese kissed her while she brought herself to climax, gasping and trembling in Reese’s gentle arms. It was those slender arms that urged her further into bed, drew the tangled covers up over their hips. They ended up settled almost forehead to forehead, Billie’s thoughts quiet for the first time in days as a rich languor seeped over her body.

“Sleep, sweetheart,” Reese murmured. “I’m going to be right here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> faceclaim for Reese if you're curious? Actress Elizabeth Debicki.
> 
> also hah, look at me, hospitalized for half the last week and STILL updating. Corvo would be proud. Gonna go eat some FRUIT.


	37. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Some explicit self-love.
> 
> Isaac tends to Corvo while he's on the mend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short but sweet, this is one of those chapters I rewrote about eight times. This works, I think. Sorry I didn't go with one of the three different smutty versions.

While the circumstances were less than ideal, Isaac finally had Corvo more or less to himself. 

Besides a short trip back home to gather up a bag of clothes, he barely left Reese’s clinic over the days that followed. The first morning, while Corvo slept, Isaac crept down to the shop, making use of some simple tools and a scrap of whalebone to carve a charm that would help Corvo’s wounds knit faster. 

The ringing hum of the Void he could feel in the bone was deeply familiar, a resonance he’d learned so well he could tune it like a harp string. In the end the magic in the charm was honed pure and true. It was an elegant thing, and Isaac felt satisfied that it was work worthy of him. When he returned to the floor above to find Corvo awake and sitting up in bed, he placed the charm in Corvo’s hands.

“Your color is better today,” he said. “Slip this into your bandages, it will help you heal.” 

Corvo did so without question. Isaac watched him stand gingerly, stretch just as carefully, and pull on a loose shirt over his bandaged body. He could already envision the new scars Corvo would have, ridged and reddish until they faded with time. Somehow, Isaac thought, it would only make him even more compelling. His gaze lingered on Corvo’s broad shoulders, the swell of his biceps still evident beneath his shirtsleeves. Then Corvo was looking back at him with a puzzled look on his face, and Isaac realized he’d been staring.

There was a stove in the room, and Isaac crouched to stoke a fire in its belly.

“Bone charms still have power, even without you in the Void?”

Isaac looked up and over his shoulder. It was one of those questions that surprised him mainly in the realization that these things weren’t common knowledge. “Charm carving is an art older than I am. They call upon the Void but they’ve never depended on me. Runes that invoke my mark are a different thing.”

“Where’d you come upon this one?”

“I made it for you.”

“I don’t recognize the rune.” Corvo was sitting on the edge of his bed, arms braced against his knees.

“There are different alphabets. Few alive remember this one, but it’s the one I prefer. The city that stood once where Dunwall stands now -- they used it there, millennia ago. You can find it still on old stones, old bones under the river muck, the prayers and profanities of the forgotten dead. Perhaps they rest all the more quietly under the shroud of the world’s ignorance. Even their struggles are dust.”

“But you remember them,” Corvo said.

Isaac placed a full kettle on the stove, and began measuring out coffee grounds into a pot. Valentino had brought a few bags of coffee from the Blackfish, quietly and privately informing Isaac that the cans of coffee Billie bought were, while very economical, also inferior. “Not so sharply or clearly any more. I haven’t always realized an era’s passing until it’s already done. An entire civilization fading to nothing while elsewhere, another burgeons and takes its place. Across so many cities, so many ages, the people remain familiar. The histories repeat themselves.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“Interesting how awareness so rarely becomes action,” Isaac said. He poured water into the coffee pot when the kettle began to whistle. The coffee would need a few minutes to brew. “I can bring you some food from upstairs,” he offered.

“Come here a moment?” Corvo sat looking at him, beseeching. Isaac stepped up to his bedside, between Corvo’s knees, and the man drew him down into a kiss. Corvo’s lips felt warm again, and the scrape of his whiskers had become such a welcome thing to Isaac. He opened his lips and felt Corvo’s tongue slip past his teeth, and it was nearly enough to make his knees buckle. He wanted more. He felt his pulse beat faster, he felt heat in his face, in his chest, but Corvo’s kiss never deepened further. When it broke, Corvo seemed bewildered by what he saw in Isaac’s face, giving a sudden, dry swallow.

Isaac stepped unsteadily away to pour Corvo a mug of fresh, hot coffee. He gave it to him black, then excused himself to go and see if there was some breakfast waiting for him on Reese’s stove upstairs.

He ended up in Reese’s washroom, leaning with his back against the door while he took himself in hand. He stroked himself hard, fast, desperate, pumping into his own grip, biting his own wrist to keep from moaning as he came. He cleaned up quickly and furtively, listening to Billie and Reese’s muted conversation from the front room and hoping they wouldn’t notice anything amiss. They didn’t mention anything, at least, as Reese gave him a plate of sausage, eggs, and toast to take downstairs. She promised to be along later to change Corvo’s bandages.

From the look that Corvo watched him with as he returned, he _definitely_ noticed. He took up his fork with the plate balanced on his lap, but his eyes were on Isaac. “You might have asked,” Corvo murmured to him.

Isaac gave him a defeated look, too frustrated to blush. “You’re injured.”

“Try me,” was Corvo’s blunt reply, his breakfast set aside. “Come here.”

“That you are ready and willing was never in doubt. You are _injured_.” Isaac repeated. “Eat your breakfast, it’s only getting colder.”

Corvo gave him a hangdog look as he reached for his plate again. Isaac sat down beside him on the edge of his bed, hands clasped between his knees. “We’ll enjoy each other when you’ve mended. I can guarantee this wait is harder for me than it is for you.”

“That troubles me more. I’ve put you through so much this soon.”

“I bereaved you. This is nothing.”

Corvo looked at him and Isaac could see the shadow of those weeks of anguish in his eyes. It wrenched at his heart. There was nothing he could do but lean in, rest his forehead on Corvo’s shoulder. “All that I’ve done, all that I’ve failed to do, it bewilders me that you think I cast light into your life and not a long, black shadow. Your charity humbles me. All I can do is be grateful.”

“And just like so you write off everything you’ve been to this lonely old man.” Corvo put his arm around Isaac’s back, his plate set aside again. 

Isaac leaned against him, saying nothing. He thought of Daud, and Delilah, and Coldridge Prison, and a long string of regrets.

“The day your letter got to me,” Corvo said, “My heart just about tore through my chest. I decoded it. I think I must have read it fifty times. I could hear your voice in every word, and knowing that I hadn’t lost you… You were in Karnaca, and I would see you again, and I would take all that sadness you’d laid at my feet on that last night and we would bury it together. The joy I felt was too much for me. I had to stretch to hold it all. 

“You didn’t see the way I wept when you swooned into my arms that night. Looking at your face, this flesh-and-blood man, all your enigmas and complexities and contradictions… Maybe it’s strange but it reminded me of the first time I held Emily. This entire person, this miracle, right in my hands and still… beyond me. It was a gift. There was no way I could earn or win anything like it. And I knew I would tie my life to yours, my future to yours, and only be richer for that.”

Isaac felt heat in his cheeks for a reason different than he was used to. Corvo’s words settled in him as an almost overwhelming warmth. He could remember when he’d witnessed those first sparks of tenderness in Corvo kindle into love, and how he’d felt the same way Corvo described, as if he held some unaccountable miracle in the palm of his hands. This love couldn’t be earned or won. It could only be given, and accepted with grace. “I’ve felt the same for you. I’ve thought of you, marvelled at you… loving you is like breathing. I cannot help myself.”

Corvo was holding him then. He was being gathered into that embrace, the scruff of Corvo’s whiskers against his cheek while the man kissed his temple. “I love you,” Corvo rumbled in his ear. “Don’t imagine that I carry grudges, some ledger of how much grief we give one another. It all washes past, just flotsam in a river. The only thing that matters is this. I will hold you in my heart for the rest of my life, Isaac. That was true even before I knew your name.”

“How do you know, somehow, the words I most need to hear…” 

“When someone’s lost in the dark, bring a light. That’s not so hard.”

“You’d be surprised,” Isaac said.

They kissed, and it was slow, soft, and warm, Isaac managing to find some reserve of patience this time. His body still felt warm with all of Corvo’s tender words. There was a surety in it, a security, something restored that the panic of two nights ago had shaken. It hadn’t occurred to him before that he had mending of his own to do.

Corvo ate his breakfast while Isaac brewed a second pot of coffee. He leaned against the counter beside the stove, watched the one he loved drag his toast through egg yolk, and smelled the aroma of brewing coffee rising from the pot. 

It was a very ordinary day. 

It was a blessing.


	38. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billie and Isaac have a heart-to-heart.

“I’m never going to get over how much of a fucking domestic you turned out to be.”

Billie Lurk was leaning against the rooftop door of Reese’s building, watching Isaac hang wet laundry to dry on a couple of lines he’d put up himself. Reese usually dried things as needed on a rack in her bathroom, but Isaac had taken it upon himself to wash everything he could find that even dubiously needed it.

“Restrict the restless hands, lest they launder everything and you can find no dry shirts left to wear.” Which explained perhaps why Isaac was in thin v-necked sweater Billie was fairly certain belonged to Reese, and some brown tweed trousers that seemed several steps too plain for what he usually wore and maybe a size too large as well.

Billie grinned. “Are you a believer now?”

“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day,” Isaac quipped as he pinned up a pinstriped bedsheet.

He was in a good mood. Billie could see the tiny quirks at the corners of his mouth, the smile he always tried to rein in at first.

“Reese said you can take your boyfriend back home tomorrow.”

“We’ve been comfortable here,” he said. “Even if we’ll enjoy being back to our own bed. I hope you understand how grateful I am.”

“You’re crazy if you think we would’ve done anything less for a friend.”

“That changes nothing.” Billie saw him smile at her from behind a dark shirt that billowed in a stiff breeze from the wind corridor. One of Corvo’s. “You saved him. Saved me. Everything I have is built on your courage, Billie.” 

Billie heard his voice as he passed behind the clotheslines until he was standing at her side, his head tilted and an odd look on his face. Then his hands were on her shoulders, and he was pulling her close.

He held her. His chin on her shoulder, he hugged her.

Once she’d wondered what he smelled like. Today he smelled like pine-scented laundry soap.

“You’ve been unshakable,” Isaac said.

Billie wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him hard. “You’ve been worth it, you huge sap. Everyone loves you.”

“Everyone loves _you_ , or haven’t you noticed?” Isaac kissed her cheek before he drew back and stepped away, smiling. “Reese is smitten. Valentino admires you more than he feared your reputation. Even Corvo speaks warmly of you.”

Billie felt her cheeks warm. She hadn’t noticed. Or at least hadn’t tallied it up, so to speak. “He’s likable,” she said. “It kind of hurts.”

Isaac stepped over to a small card table someone had set up on the roof long enough ago that the peeling paint showed rust underneath. He pulled out a rickety chair for Billie before he sat down himself. “We carry the scars of what was done to us, and what we’ve done. But the wound is closed, and the scars can fade.”

“That’s pretty optimistic, for you,” Billie observed.

“You’ve shown me how much I never knew. You and Corvo, in different ways.”

“You’re besotted with that man,” Billie said. 

“I realize your interest lies elsewhere but you have _looked_ at him? Have you heard the way his voice sounds when he says my name?”

Billie rolled her eyes. “I’m happy for you, Isaac.”

“I’m happy for you, as well.” There was something teasing in his voice, and Billie turned to follow his gaze past her shoulder. Reese’s purple lingerie was hanging on the line.

“Watch your step there,” she grumbled.

“A beauty with warmth and wits to match your own. Like you once did, she faced this world with her head down and her mouth shut tight, focused on survival. And together with you, you can both do so much more than just survive.”

“I hope so,” Billie said. “Did Corvo tell you what he said to me?”

“He told me he thought you were the best candidate for someone to succeed him as Royal Protector. I told him I’m not sure courtly life would suit you very well.”

Billie nodded. “Part of me understands where he’s coming from, and part of me thinks he’s out of his mind.”

“He told me he’s still working it out in his head. He has weeks of work here in Karnaca, and he wants to see where things take you both.” Isaac was giving her an assessing stare, likely weighing options in his own mind. Billie wondered if he saw things play out almost as he had from the Void, entire futures unfolding with a single choice at the crux. His advice, she realized, would be invaluable.

“That at least sounds sane,” Billie said.

“He’s unconventional but he’s not _mad_ ,” said Isaac. “He places too much on his own shoulders. Or perhaps he’s used to the world doing that for him. I think he sees in you what I do.”

Billie grinned. “Standing up for your man, Isaac?”

Isaac’s cheeks flushed in the most gratifying way. He took a breath and collected himself while giving Billie a look of mild consternation. “I’m beginning to think you enjoy doing that. But yes, and why shouldn’t I? I cast myself in the role of mediator when I begged you not to run.”

“I guess you did,” Billie said. She fell silent for a moment, watching the laundry blowing on the lines and thinking back. “You were right. I’m not sure how I thought things would shake out, but it wasn’t like this.”

“How do you feel?” Isaac’s head was tilted, his eyes filled with earnest curiosity. “Are you glad you stood your ground?”

So much was uncertain, but that much was clear. Billie nodded. “Like I said, you were right. I don’t know what’s ahead of us but right now? Feels a little bit like having a home.”

The smile he gave her then was a rare one, unrestrained and warm. “It’s a new feeling for me but I know it now, I think.”

“When Corvo goes back to Dunwall, you’re going with him?”

His smile fell away to a more thoughtful look, then perhaps even a troubled one. Billie regretted the question.

“Are you?” he finally asked. “And what of Reese?”

“Reese is with me, whatever comes next. And … I don’t know, right now. Because I don’t belong in a palace or a royal court. I’m not sure I even belong in Dunwall. And the Empire… to Corvo Attano it’s his own flesh and blood, but I don’t know if I even have any skin in that game, Isaac.” Billie sighed, slumping forward with her head propped against her hands.

There was a long silence between them. When Isaac broke it, his voice was soft. “I’m not ready to part ways with you, my dearest friend.”

Billie didn’t raise her head but she shook it slowly, smiling even so. Of course he’d be so disarmingly sincere about it.

“Me neither,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another short one but i love them okay. [also I've been taking prompts on my tumbo.](http://cinnabarbarian.tumblr.com/tagged/prompts)


	39. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billie and Isaac consult a former witch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introducing a new semi-OC, Fidelia Espinoza. You might remember finding her journal in the first mission of DotO.

Valentino Bianchi found a witch for them.

Even if Corvo’s injury was healed enough to allow it, it was too important that he remain incognito for him to meet with her himself. Billie and Isaac knew as much about the situation as he did -- probably more, in most aspects. And if what they suspected was true, Isaac’s presence alone would be enough to provoke some honest answers.

Not that he seemed particularly enthusiastic about the idea.

“She will do what every witch has always done,” Isaac said as they climbed the stairs to the Blackfish cafe. “Lay all her troubles at my feet, promise offerings of blood and bone, and demand power that will accomplish nothing but dig a deeper hole for her to wallow in.”

“Really? No soft spot for your fans?” Billie teased him but her tone was dry.

The look he gave her was surprisingly thoughtful. “I have as much sympathy for them as for anyone else struggling under more hardship than they can bear. I know why they cried out to me. I’ve watched them eke out their living in the narrow spaces between the walls of this world’s rigid order, never knowing the beauty in simply _that_ , flowers breaking through paving stones.”

Valentino waved to them as they entered, and the two of them sat at the far corner of the bar. It was a cool morning, only slightly overcast, and the light in the room was muted and mild. It conveyed a calm upon the whole cafe, upon Billie and Isaac, but incongruously not upon Valentino. He was frowning and uneasy while he brewed some espresso for the two of them.

Billie exchanged glances with Isaac. He noticed, but his expression was inscrutable. A small tilt of his head indicated it was up to Billie.

“What’s eating you, Valentino? Is there something we should know?”

Billie’s question pulled him out of his thoughts. He looked guilty at first, but then, looking down into a demitasse as he filled it, Billie wondered if he wasn’t just worried.

“Listen, both of you--” He halted, head raised, looking off and upward as if he could find the words he needed in the rafters. “This woman, this, ah, _witch_... I’m sure you know what it means to have a past you--” He stopped abruptly, his eyes on the door.

A young woman was standing there. She was wearing short, scuffed boots and twill pants worn threadbare at the knees. A rust-colored shawl was wrapped around her shoulders.

She was staring at Isaac with wide eyes, color draining from her face at first, then returning in a vibrant flush. She rushed up to the far end of the counter, motioning to Valentino almost frantically.

Valentino excused himself and went to her; at her bidding he stepped outside the door to talk with her where neither of them could hear.

Billie discovered that the Eye could read lips.

“Tino!” The woman said. “You don’t-- there’s no way you can possibly--”

“Fidelia, slow down. It’s alright, they’re friends of mine.”

“No they’re-- I mean, maybe, but you have no idea! That man at the end of the bar, Tino, he’s… fuck, you wouldn’t even believe me. What in the Void have you gotten yourself mixed up in? Do you even know his name?”

“I know who he is, Fidelia.” Valentino seemed calm.

“No, no you don’t! There’s no way you could--”

“Fidelia, please. Just come in and answer some questions for them like we talked about. They won’t h--”

“He’s the Outsider, Tino. That man is the Outsider. I’m not speaking fucking metaphorically here.”

“Was,” Valentino corrected.

There was a long pause.

“His name is Isaac, as it turns out,” Valentino said.

Fidelia went on staring at Valentino. Then she turned her head to stare through the glass door instead. Billie quickly turned away, back to her drink.

She heard the doors open again, two sets of footsteps. Valentino stepped back behind the bar, his unease even more evident upon his face. 

Fidelia’s approach was halting, hesitant. When Isaac lifted his head and looked at her, she froze entirely. She had large, dark eyes, and they were wide -- fixed on the man who had once been the Outsider. Billie almost wondered if the former witch even noticed her there at all.

“I-I… I kn-kn-know…”

The woman stammered. Her olive cheeks flushed, her stricken eyes burned like embers as she looked away and her small hands clutched tighter at the shawl she wrapped herself in. Billie realized she was trembling.

“Y-you,” Fidelia said. “I saw your face in a dream.” She drew a slow breath, the tremor in it evident, but she was working to collect herself. “I wasn’t the only one. I still know some of the others who ran when the coven fell apart. They all had the same dream. But I didn’t need to know that, to know that it was real.”

Isaac listened, so still and inscrutable that he reminded Billie very much of who he’d been during their first encounters. “I know you, Fidelia Espinoza. I know you went to Delilah Copperspoon in search of a tutelage far different from the one you received. But receive it you did, more eager with every night that passed. You ground pigments and stretched canvases while your own brushes gathered dust and the anger in your heart became a stylus to etch your vision upon the world. When magic was lost to you, you searched for my voice in forgotten manuscripts, in old rhymes, in the low and lonely places where you scrabbled to survive… in hollow rituals, in the pink viscera of a dead hound.”

Billie saw her wince. The witch bowed her head even further. She’d already dropped her gaze away from Isaac’s, but now she hunched into her shawl as if she wanted to disappear.

“I’m… sorry. I didn’t understand. No one understood what you really were.”

“And you do now?” The scepticism in Isaac’s voice was evident.

“I-I didn’t say… I mean, we know more than we did. Which isn’t hard, I guess. We knew fuck-all. We all thought we were so wise...”

Valentino set another demitasse upon the bar. Fidelia raised her head with a startled blink as he motioned to her.

“I can’t--”

“It’s on the house. You’re doing me a favor, after all.” Valentino smiled, but it had a reticence Billie had never seen in him.

Fidelia took the cup and its saucer. “...Thanks, Tino.” She held the saucer in both hands and slurped a sip from the rim of the full cup, as if she didn’t trust herself to lift it on its own.

“Valentino, have you got a back room we can use?” Billie hardly needed to say why. 

With the other one or two customers absorbed in their newspapers, he lifted the counter and motioned them back to a small break room, barely large enough for the couch against the right-hand wall and the small table against the opposite. Billie pulled out one of the two spindly wooden chairs and straddled it, sitting with her arms folded on the chairback. Isaac leaned against the wall beside the single small window, his arms folded over his chest. Fidelia took a seat on the sofa after some hesitation. She finally let go of her shawl.

Billie took a moment to look her over.

She was beautiful; that had been obvious from the first. She had large, dark, serious eyes, olive skin, and thick dark hair. She was anxious, and that much had also been plain to see and still was. When she lifted her cup, the saucer shook in her other hand.

As for what the Eye saw? The black seed in her chest where the Void had been part of her once. A spiderweb of cracks spreading out from her heart, red and blue like the veins of an anatomist’s dummy. Pain and discontent like rifts through every part of her, and the winding tendrils of something fiercely determined to hold her together, stitch it all together anyway.

Billie frowned. For the first time she wondered, if she could gaze on herself this way, what would she see? What would her own wounds look like? Like this? Like the pulsing sorrow inside Corvo Attano, or the faded scar on Reese? 

At least it wouldn’t be like the consuming darkness that Isaac still carried, so deep that looking into him gave her vertigo. Yet now, when she looked at him, there were lights in the darkness, emerging constellations, a heart like a full moon.

“We need you to tell us about that dream. Anything you remember about it could be important,” Billie said.

Fidelia nodded. She looked down into her cup and frowned. Diffidence didn’t suit her, Billie thought. She could see her shifting uncomfortably under it, like a too-small jacket, like an oppressive weight. It was only her nervousness holding it in place.

“You were in it, too,” Fidelia began. “There was a man I couldn’t quite see, or more… the shadow of a man. And there was _him_ ,” she motioned to Isaac, “and there was you. You said something about giving back the Outsider’s name, and the shadow spoke it to him and then he vanished away. Suddenly I knew that the Outsider wasn’t what everyone thought. Not the Abbey, not the other witches. 

“I saw black stone melt away and free him and it was as if all this knowledge was set free along with him. I knew he’d been a prisoner without being told. I knew he’d suffered, and he’d been put in the Void by others for the most selfish fucking reasons.”

Billie saw Fidelia’s fist clench where it rested on her thigh. Her beautiful face was stormy with anger, but something more was written in the tightness around her eyes. When Billie glanced to Isaac he was still silent and stoic, still watching and listening with his arms folded across him.

“But… he was free. And I think, in that moment… I don’t know if it was just that I knew his story or if it was something more, but I _felt_...” Fidelia trailed off, stealing a glance at Isaac. “There was this soaring feeling. I woke up and there were tears on my face.” She smiled awkwardly, rubbing at her eyes, a memory vivid enough to spill into the present.

Billie remembered the look on Isaac’s face when she’d told him he was free. She thought of the way she’d seen that hope and wonder quietly reprised in so many moments between them since that day. That soaring feeling. Had it been Isaac’s or her own -- or the whole world’s for just one strange instant?

Isaac finally uncrossed his arms. He was looking at Fidelia with a scrutinizing curiosity. “It may be wisest to assume that any dreamer who’s truly glimpsed the Void witnessed that moment.”

Fidelia nodded. “It seems that way to me. The other witches I still talk to all had the dream.”

“There are others,” Isaac said. “Oracles, and some random few across the Isles who’ve hidden their gifts. And some among the cult that made me.”

Billie felt the hairs on her arm stand on end. A mix of fear and anger made her feel both hot and cold at once, her heart pounding. The Twin-bladed Knife felt restless inside her in a way she couldn’t describe, shards of glass rattling in a shaken package. “You’ve had this suspicion for _how long_ , Isaac? Just how hard should I have been watching my back?”

“It’s my back they’re interested in,” Isaac answered.

“How long, Isaac?” Billie repeated.

He frowned. “When you rescued me from the Abbey I saw writing on a wall. I wasn’t sure at first but as time went on I saw those words in other places.” He never glanced away from her, though there was some guilt on his face. “I kept my thoughts to myself. You have cares enough without me adding to them and I wasn’t certain. It was only a possibility. You had purged their numbers in Karnaca. I can hardly be recognized if they never encounter me.”

“You’re as bad as your boyfriend,” Billie sighed, leaning her forehead against the chair back for one frustrated moment.

“I’m sorry, Billie.” He said it and meant it.

After a moment Fidelia spoke again. “‘He is Risen,’” she said. “Is that what you saw?”

Billie nodded.

“Some of the other witches…” Fidelia frowned, then tossed back the last of her coffee while she composed her thoughts. “Alright, so. Delilah showed up in Karnaca about three years ago living with the Duke. But she was lovers with Breanna Ashworth, who had been running the Royal Conservatory for a while. 

“The Conservatory has, or more like they _used_ to have a pretty hot-shit artists’ residency. When I heard that Delilah Copperspoon was in Karnaca and she was producing new work, I figured getting the residency might mean meeting her and maybe apprenticing. Well… I failed at basically all of that. But Breanna still took me on, just not as a painter. She had a group of women there, and she was teaching all of us magic.

“Suited me fine. I had nowhere else to go and…” Fidelia trailed off. “Anyway. Shit hit the fucking fan but one of the older witches saw it coming. Some of us got out of the Cyria District and started looking for a safehouse someplace else. Then the Abbey came in and … I don’t think anything good happened to the women who stayed behind. All we know is one day none of us had magic anymore.

“That older witch? Her name’s Amala Chaudhari. She used to be in some other coven of Delilah’s, one in Dunwall years back during the plague. Anyway, some of the witches just went their separate ways but a lot of them stayed with Amala. Now they’re calling themselves ‘sisters’ again, and taking down the shrines. I’m still not clear on why.”

“Do you know where we can find her?” Billie asked.

Fidelia gave her a sharp look, but then her gaze shifted towards Isaac and it softened. She sighed. “Can I at least ask what for?”

“We just want to talk,” Billie said.

“She may have some insight. In an interesting reversal of fortune, I may be too close to this situation to see it fully.” Isaac almost smiled.

Fidelia frowned. She looked down at her hands clasped between her knees, badly bitten nails and pigment-stained fingers. “They’re in the old city. They’ve got a warehouse that they’re converting into apartments. It’s on the north edge of town, by the logging rails. I’ll tell them you’re coming.”

“Do that,” Billie said, realizing only afterwards that it almost sounded like a threat.

“Look, I should tell you…” Fidelia hesitated, then shook her head, defeated in some argument with herself. “They’re just trying to get by. Whatever this shit is with the shrines and the writing and the fucking sermons, they’re not hurting anybody. I left because I was still looking for a way to get magic back, and Amala said we should just be finding work and trying to survive. I thought she’d given up. Turned out she just ...knew you’d never answer us.”

The look Fidelia gave Isaac was almost accusatory, but then simply despairing in the split moment before she looked away.

“Now that you finally speak to me, I’m just a stop along the way,” she sighed.

“What is it you think you need from me now?” Isaac’s tone was arch but icy.

Fidelia stiffened where she sat as if she’d been slapped.

“You know, I wish I had a fucking answer,” she muttered. She stood up and wrapped her shawl around her shoulders. “Tell ‘Tino the coffee was great.”

Billie watched her leave.

“Was that really necessary?” Billie looked at Isaac and saw the ice melt from his expression the moment the door shut behind the former witch.

“Fidelia Espinoza, a bright flower sown in the cracks between cold pavers. She doesn’t see what she has, always staring down the maw of everything she doesn’t. And now what she desires isn’t my Mark,” he sighed. 

“It is simply me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry I missed a week. T_T I fell behind on some work while I was sick. But as bonus material you can [check out some prompts I filled](http://cinnabarbarian.tumblr.com/tagged/prompts) and also [check out my new kitten.](http://cinnabarbarian.tumblr.com/tagged/Mogwai) He is a joy <3


	40. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corvo visits his former home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: feels.

Corvo Attano had never handled boredom very well.

Isaac had stayed beside him for the first days of his recovery, but now he and Billie Lurk were elsewhere in the city, meeting a former witch that Valentino Bianchi had suggested to them. Corvo’s wounds had closed well, leaving angry red scars surrounded by dark bruises. He was still sore, and he still tired easily as his body replenished lost blood, but he was no longer bedridden.

He was restless, and the walls around him were beginning to feel uncomfortably close.

Early that morning Valentino had presented him with the day’s news and a telegraph from Emily: “You have some explaining to do, but tell him I said hello.” Corvo had grinned. He could hear her, picture the look on her face, exasperation tucked away behind a disapproval she hoped came across as stern. The Empress face.

It didn’t work on him.

With the apartment to himself and nothing else to occupy him, Corvo had penned a reply. He knew it would take some time to reach Emily, but she would appreciate it regardless.

 

> Dear Emily,
> 
> I relayed your greeting. Isaac smiled when he said he’s looking forward to seeing you again. I’m sorry you had to find out this way but I wasn’t sure how to explain. It happened so fast and I was left reeling. 
> 
> I’m still trying to dig up more intelligence about what the Abbey’s doing. There was an incident and I was wounded, but I’m fine. You have our friend Billie Lurk to thank for that.
> 
> It feels strange even writing that, but I believe she IS our friend. If you read the letter I left behind then you know how she’s involved. I won’t tell you how to feel or what to think. None of us will ever forget, but maybe forgiveness isn’t quite impossible.
> 
> I hope Wyman is well, and I’m sure the Kestrel made it back in fine shape. I appreciate him lending it to me. I’m sure Isaac does too.
> 
> All my love,  
>  Your Dad
> 
> PS: Tell Jameson I’m sorry. Just in general.

  


 

Corvo went over it a few times before he finally put down his pen and folded the short note into an envelope. It was woefully sparse but it would have to do. Sometimes writing helped him organize his thoughts, but more often he had no idea where to even begin. He’d make up for it when he saw his daughter again. They’d have one of those late-night talks in the safe room, just the two of them and a pot of hot tea.

He missed her.

He saw her mother in her clearly enough. Moments where Emily was far too serious, and other moments where she was full of wit and mischief. She was smart, smarter than he was; she needed someone as effortlessly glib as Wyman to keep up with her. He saw Jessamine’s thoughtful compassion in Emily, her instinct for when the ‘obvious’ answers were hiding a more complicated truth. 

He saw so much of himself in her as well. He knew her restless energy because it was his own, and that had made it so difficult to chastise her when she was bored with the duties of her office. He saw the way she loved a challenge, the way she focused on the things that excited her. As they’d recovered from the coup he’d seen that fire directed at things she’d once found tedious. She was going to make the Empire better. Governance was no longer a chore, but a challenge.

She was going to rise to that challenge and conquer it. He had no doubt of that at all.

At that moment, sitting in Isaac’s apartment with nothing much to occupy his time, Corvo knew what long meetings and endless briefings brought out in Emily. He felt ready to climb the walls.

He’d exhausted what little there was for him to do. Any paperwork he had was already done, any dossiers he’d been sent were already read. He’d rummaged the kitchen for something to eat but found nothing to his liking. All these things converged and he decided he could risk a walk outside.

Fifteen years ago Corvo had been in Karnaca, sent on Jessamine’s behalf to find help for a beleaguered Dunwall, a remedy for the mysterious plague. It had been nothing but a brief stop-over, still longer than he’d wanted at the time. The Battista District, the streets he’d haunted in his youth, he hadn’t seen in almost forty years. He wondered how much they’d changed.

He was fairly certain no one would recognize him. If anyone paid attention to silvergraphs in the paper, his features might be vaguely familiar, but most casual observers tended not to see things they didn’t expect to. In his plainest clothing, his dark coat, he’d just be another passer-by.

When he stepped out into the streets, he shoved his hands in his pockets, his coat left open. There was a hard wind coming down from the peak, one that felt so familiar that the decades between his childhood and the present seemed to disappear. He found himself smiling. He found himself longing for Isaac, unsure why or what brought him so strongly to mind.

Maybe it was the way his arms felt empty when he thought about his family.

Emily had told him that his house was standing empty, with a bronze plaque on its face. He thought of it, windows broken, that hard wind blasting through it.

He tried to put it from his mind. He could picture for an instant his mother’s sewing machine in an empty bedroom, covered in silverdust. He remembered how they had both refused to cry when he’d left for Dunwall, her strained smile and tender eyes the last time she’d embraced him. She was proud of him, she’d said. She always would be.

Weeks later she was dead and he was alone.

When he came out of his thoughts he found that his feet had been carrying him home.

Things had changed. The big bank on the corner was fronted with scaffolding, veiled with dusty canvas. The corner deli was shuttered and boarded up. The old barber shop was gone, a dentist in its place. But up the road, besides its darkened windows and the plaque bolted to the masonry, his house was the house he’d known, only older.

It seemed so much smaller, now. It hadn’t, when he was growing up in it. He’d known so many people who had so much less than his family did. They had food on the table every night, and he didn’t even have to share a bedroom with his sister.

He put his hand on the doorknob. For some reason the place hadn’t been shuttered. Perhaps because there was nothing of value to loot, and the street too well-trafficked for squatters. He hesitated there for a moment before he forced the door with a hard shove of his good shoulder. The frame was old and the strike plate tore free of the wood. Corvo left the door swinging as he stepped into the shadowed entryway. Dim light streamed through heavy dustmotes from the top of the stairs in front of him.

His trophy from the Blade Verbena might still be where he’d stashed it a lifetime ago. Maybe two lifetimes, he thought. The stairs creaked under him, and his footfalls stirred up dust that tickled in his nose.

The upstairs was almost empty. Some remnants of decrepit furniture still sat gathering dust and cobwebs. Some of it he remembered his father making. He remembered helping him in the small woodshop downstairs, fetching and counting nails, mixing wood glue, sweeping sawdust.

The trophy was indeed where he’d stowed it, along with a piece of old, bleached whalebone he’d found and known his mother wouldn’t approve of him hanging onto. He wasn’t sure why he had. Maybe some mix of curiosity and defiance. His mother had been a devout follower of the strictures, but he’d been more set on making up his own mind. And there had been times when, with his father and his sister gone, his mother’s devotion had felt almost stifling.

He tucked both objects into an inner pocket of his coat.

He went to his parents’ room then, his mother’s room, wondering if anything remained of her but his memories. Her sewing machine sat beneath a boarded-up window, just as he’d imagined. And set beside it in the dust, a leatherbound journal.

He opened it, flipping through to the last page before only blanks remained.

 

> _  
> _
> 
> I cried again this morning, and can't bring myself to eat.
> 
> It's not that I'm not proud of my Corvo. I've always been proud of him. Always known he was special. So much quicker and stronger than the other boys. So serious. His eyes, keen, even when he was barely able to walk. I nearly burst with pride sometimes.
> 
> I knew when he went after the Blade Verbena he'd win it, even so young. I pretended to worry, to wring my hands and look away, and catch my breath, but it was an act. I knew he'd win.
> 
> I just never thought he'd be sent away, taken to Dunwall. I should be happy about his new position, bragging, not crying. Oh, my chest feels heavy just thinking of it. He didn't have a choice, did he? They've taken him from me. Set him on a new road. My poor boy.
> 
> First Beatrici, years ago. My wanderer daughter, setting off for who knows where, guided only by the stars. And now my Corvo, racing away into unknown weather.

__

Hadn’t he known? He asked himself. Hadn’t he known all along? He closed the diary, tucked it away in his coat with the other relics of his past. Did he feel anything? Should he? He asked himself again and again until it became a litany. It had been almost four decades. There was nothing left to grieve, barely even a memory.

Yet by the time he stepped off the doorstep of the place where he’d been born, he felt like screaming. He felt like howling into the wind. He felt like pounding on the doors of people who might have once been his neighbors, asking if anyone knew the truth of how Paloma Attano died.

Then Corvo realized there was one person he could ask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoping to get back to weekly updates. We'll see.


	41. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isaac no longer relishes doling out hard truths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: First, feels. Then, smutty AF.

Corvo was sitting in the window behind the breakfast table when Isaac returned home. The sash was up as far as it went, high enough that Corvo could perch in the frame, his back leaning against one end of it and his boot braced against the other while he puffed on a cigar.

“You shouldn’t be smoking,” Isaac said to him as he hung his coat. Not so soon after Reese had stitched up a hole in his lung. But Corvo only gave him the briefest of looks before he went back to staring out over the rooftops across the street.

Something was wrong.

Isaac stepped up beside Corvo, leaning against the edge of the breakfast table while he regarded him. There had been times, as the Outsider, that he’d known people’s thoughts all too well. There had also been times when he’d known those thoughts more as the jumble of feelings that preceded them. But now, all he could do was try to read the lines of Corvo’s face.

He reached for Corvo’s hand, and Corvo let him take it. He raised it and kissed him where his Mark had been, pressed it against his lips and held it there for a long, quiet moment. 

“You said you would answer anything I asked,” Corvo said.

“I did, and will.”

Corvo looked at him then, and what he saw in his eyes, the confusion and consternation, made his heart sink. Was it something he’d done? But how could it be, when everything had been fine that morning? Better than fine, he thought, remembering the feeling of waking up in Corvo’s arms, his lover curled around him, warm breath on the nape of his neck.

Then Corvo asked, “How did my mother die?”

Corvo had never known the truth, and Isaac knew the truth would hurt him. He hesitated, and that hesitation was answer enough. He saw Corvo’s suspicions solidify in the instant before the man looked away, eyes closing as if to shutter away his grief.

“Paloma Attano threw herself from the overlook below Miners’ Square, less than three weeks after you sailed from Karnaca. Her last thoughts were of her children.” As the words left his lips, Isaac found himself reprising his old, familiar role. A role he’d never wanted.

Isaac reached to cup his palm against Corvo’s cheek. There were other roles he could step into, and the role of lover had quickly become his favorite, but Corvo took him by the wrist and guided his hand away.

“Where is Beatrici? What happened to my sister?”

“Corvo…” Isaac frowned, faltered.

He’d known these questions would come. He’d hoped he wouldn’t, or that at least they’d come much later. The answers were bleak and terrible. They could give no comfort, only grief, and Isaac hated causing Corvo pain. But he’d given his word, and beyond that, Corvo had a right to know.

“Please tell me, Isaac.”

Isaac bowed his head, looking away. “Why do you want this pain? Why do you come to me for help licking open closed wounds like a beast that doesn’t know better? I hate this. These are cold and wretched truths you’re telling me to exhume from graveyard soil.”

“Isaac.”

Isaac raised his eyes to Corvo again. The crags of his face were easy enough to read; sadness that weighed on him like a physical burden, like days of toil and sleepless nights. “She is dead, Corvo,” he said, his voice quiet and soft. “Even longer dead than your mother. Beatrici left your home after an argument with her, but your sister had been planning her journey for weeks. Feeling trapped in the life she was leading, she believed she could start a new one in Morley, working in the textile mills. She packed her bags and boarded a ship bound for Alba.

“One night out from port, the ship’s crew held her at gunpoint, bound her, and placed her and four other young women on a smaller ship bound for Whitecliff, where smugglers planned to sell them to a brothel. But Beatrici wasn’t easily cowed by threats and weapons. She freed herself and the other captive women, and found a way to scuttle the ship’s engine to prevent pursuit. But in the moment of escape, as she cast the lifeboat free, she took a bullet in the stomach. Her death was …” Isaac stopped short. Corvo knew what a gut shot meant. 

“She lay across the laps of the people she had saved, and her last breath passed her lips as the sky turned rosey with the sunrise. They held her hands and stroked her hair, and they thanked her with their tears. They blessed her, and grieved her, and gave her body to the deep.”

The story ended, words dropped into the long silence that followed.

“Are any of them still alive? These people my sister saved?” Corvo’s voice was hoarse when he spoke. Isaac saw the way he looked almost puzzled at the tightness in his own throat. He’d seen it in Corvo before, his emotions rising like an incoming tide swelling around his ankles while he told himself he could keep his head, keep himself above it.

“Three of them live. Two have children now, and one is a grandmother. And one of those children is named Beatrici.”

Corvo brushed away a tear on his own cheek, the motion a jerk of impulse, as if swatting away a fly. “You were watching?” He asked.

“Yes.”

Corvo gave him a long look, his eyes as intense as Isaac had ever seen them. Now he was certain he did know the man’s thoughts. He knew what was coming. He pushed off from the table’s edge and began to turn away, something burning and bitter in the back of his throat.

“Your Mark could have saved her.”

“Or it could have damned her. Or she could have saved herself, the bullet could have missed, one of the others could have risen to operate the pulley… there were a thousand possibilities. I am sorry they folded into a future you wish were otherwise.” Isaac walked away from Corvo, and as he turned away, gathered himself, his feelings hidden under a face turning suddenly calm and cold. He heard Corvo moving behind him, rising from his perch to follow him.

“You could have marked any of them and it all would have been different!” Corvo growled. “They were desperate, they were in danger, don’t tell me you felt nothing for--”

“How many people in this Empire of yours do you think are desperate? How many are fighting for their lives even at this moment? At any moment?” Isaac barely raised his voice. He turned slowly, hands loosely clasped, fingers looking for a ring that used to be there out of a habit so old he wasn’t sure when he’d learned it. “Whatever I feel or don’t feel, I couldn’t have marked them all.”

Corvo’s expression was stormy, defiant. He wasn’t ready to accept that answer.

“I thought you were more of a pragmatist than this, Corvo,” Isaac said, his voice smooth, cold. “More content to let the past lie. There’s nothing either of us can do for your lost family now. Even your mourning is done and past by now. And now you judge my shortcomings not because of Daud and Delilah, but because of your mother and sister. Was it generosity on your part or just dumb luck on mine that it’s taken you this long to condemn me?” His lip curled in a half-scowl, the coldness of his tone turning sharp and bitter.

The look Corvo gave him was an odd one. For a moment it brought to mind the suspicion he’d been used to from him during the days of the plague. But it quickly became something else. Something troubled that made Isaac want to swallow his words. “Why not, then? Why not her?”

This was a question everyone seemed to ask, eventually, and hearing it made him tired. Billie had asked something similar before she’d freed him. He had never felt inclined to answer it, but then, until this moment it had never seemed that the answer would make any difference to the person asking.

Even in the morass of his disappointment, there was some glimmer of hope that it would be different this time. That Corvo would be different.

“I know you believed the Mark’s power came at a price. _I_ was the one paying it. The Mark was not my blessing, Corvo. It was my _leash_. The magic my Marked used was channeled into this world through me.” Isaac looked down at his own hands. “The Mark held the one thing that I needed to be whole. When someone invoked it I reached for it heedlessly, desperately, like a drowning man struggling for the surface. I had no choice. I closed the circuit and the Void raged through me like electricity surging through an arc pylon. With everything my Marked did with their power, I…” Isaac trailed off, trying to keep his face calm and still. He could feel the tightness between his brows, the tug of a frown at the corners of his mouth. He was no longer what he was, but he could remember how it had felt. 

“I suffered. There were times I felt my limits and nearly lost myself. I could sustain only so many. So I tried to choose carefully. I tried to place my power where it could do the most good, or effect the most change. I tried to choose the ways in which I was _used_ , and _used I was._ And most, at times, have used me cruelly and in ways I despised.

“Which leads me to a question for you. Who is entitled to my sacrifice? Who has a right to my pain?” Isaac looked Corvo in the eyes.

What he saw in Corvo’s face made his heart ache. His own disappointment and frustration barely mattered when he weighed it against Corvo’s anguish. He understood, when he saw Corvo’s anger crumble, that it was merely something he grabbed at to fight the grief. Corvo was afraid of the pain -- unwilling to admit it, but rightly afraid, because Isaac knew how many times it had almost crushed him.

“I never knew…” Corvo spoke hoarsely, trailing off as he lost the fight against his own tears. Again he brushed at them more like he’d felt something crawling on his face, surprised, irritated. He heard Corvo try to swallow back a sob, and immediately he reached for him. It felt like the stone of the Void falling away from numb, leaden arms and a frozen heart.

“Now stop asking me to be what I was!” Isaac placed his hands on the sides of Corvo’s face. Corvo allowed it this time. “I’ve given you the truth. Now let me give you comfort. Let me be tender instead, I _beg_ you!” It was his turn to be taken aback by the catch in his own voice, the hot tears standing in his eyes.

Corvo slipped to his knees and put his arms around Isaac’s waist, burying his face against his chest. “If that’s what you want.” His voice was rough.

Isaac held on tight as Corvo wept without a sound. He could feel it in the way his breath heaved and his shoulders shook. The man had his fists in Isaac’s shirt, his face pressed against his belly while Isaac’s fingers carded through his his hair. “On the day I sailed from Karnaca I thought, she’s been through worse. She’ll hurt but she’ll make it. My mother…”

Isaac rubbed Corvo’s shoulders. “I wish she could have met Emily. I wish we could have sat at the table together, like every supper when I was a boy, my mother and my father and my sister…” Corvo choked on the words. “I miss the potato soup she used to make. I should’ve learned the recipe. Beatrici knew it.”

Isaac realized he’d begun to cry as well. The depth of Corvo’s love for them breathed color into his own distant knowledge of Corvo’s family. He felt as if he almost, almost had known them. As if their lives could have touched but they were just beyond the reach of his fingertips. He felt bereft.

“I am sorry,” Isaac choked. “I’m sorry I did nothing. I’m sorry I couldn’t save them.”

“It isn’t your fault,” Corvo held him tighter, nuzzled against his stomach. Isaac hunched downward, curled around him as much as he could, his arms across Corvo’s lean back.

“I still regret,” Isaac murmured. “We are all made by the things that are taken from us, and this world took too much from you. I have always marvelled at how people like you and Billie keep yourselves so defiantly whole. You wear your wounds, your battle scars, and stand tall despite them.”

Corvo slowly stood again, his arms still around Isaac as he did. Isaac found himself with his head against Corvo’s chest and Corvo’s lips against his hair. “You think you’re any different?”

He gave a single, quiet chuckle, the sound muted against Corvo’s chest. “I don’t feel strong,” he said.

“You are.” Then Corvo lifted his chin and kissed him.

Isaac felt breathless. His heart was so full it had to be crushing the air out of his lungs. He kissed back, open-mouthed, and found himself trembling in Corvo’s embrace as if it was their first night together. It had only been a few days, hadn’t it?

But then he felt Corvo’s whiskers against his neck, his voice rumbling in his ear. “Bedroom,” he said. 

Isaac’s knees felt loose as he complied.

Corvo was right behind him, so close Isaac swore he could feel the heat of the other man’s body. When he reached the bedside Corvo clasped his arms around him from behind and opened his shirt one button at a time. Corvo undid the buckle of Isaac’s belt while his lips rested against the rim of his ear. 

Then he murmured in Isaac’s ear. “Do you want me inside you?”

Isaac tried to answer only to stammer uselessly. Words escaped him. He felt his cheeks flush with heat and his cock stiffen so quickly it ached. He started to struggle against his clothes, desperate to undress, grateful for the help of Corvo’s calmer, more methodical hands. A few moments of freeing himself from shirtsleeves, from buckled boots, and those hands were helping him into bed.

Isaac lay on his back while Corvo knelt over him, stripping off his own clothing one piece at a time, as if the long wait they’d endured hadn’t been enough of a tease. His wounds had closed enough that he no longer bandaged them; the fresh scars were red and stark, surrounded by dark bruises.

As something like thought returned to him, Isaac looked up into Corvo’s eyes and saw the heat in them, their focus intense and resting on him heavily, a pressure he could almost feel. Isaac ran his hands down his own body, arched and stretched beneath Corvo’s gaze, and saw the heat in his eyes burn hotter, his intense stare turning hungry and pleading as Isaac wrapped his fingers around his own shaft. The moment Corvo had pushed his pants down past his hips he lunged in, resting on Isaac’s body while his hands travelled along his flanks, grasped at his waist and his hips while Corvo’s mouth browsed his collarbone.

Isaac could think of nothing but what Corvo had promised. His legs spread, knees clamped against Corvo’s hips while he rolled his hips beneath him. “Please…” he heard himself gasping, his lips forming the word on their own, again and again. “Please, please, Corvo, please… please give me…”

Then Corvo’s voice was in his ear again, rough the way crushed velvet is. “Give you what, love?”

He was smug. Isaac felt his weight bearing down, pinning him helplessly beneath him. “Please!” He repeated again, breathless and urgent and starting to tremble. He knew the word but his mouth refused it, he balked. Why should he have to say it? Corvo _knew_! This was a cruel tease.

“Please what? I’ll give you everything you ask for, but you need to tell me. Tell me clearly what you want.”

“..You!” Isaac tried to squirm but Corvo’s hands clamped down on his arms, held him tightly in place. “You, Corvo, please…” He groaned. His face was red, he could tell. His skin felt burning hot with shame. “I want… you… inside me. I want you to take me…”

“Take you where? I know a bistro in Padilla,” Corvo teased.

Isaac tried to buck him off for that. “You _know_! Don’t fool with me or I’ll change my mind!”

“I doubt that very much.” Corvo’s voice was both a growl and a purr. His tamed Isaac with a kiss, long and deep, his tongue filling Isaac’s mouth the way he wanted to be filled elsewhere. He moaned again, almost sobbing with frustration.

Corvo shushed him with his gentlest tones. “All you need is to say it. Tell me to fuck you. Tell me you want my cock inside you.”

Isaac struggled hard, but he could feel his erection straining, dripping onto his own tense stomach. “Corvo… Please f-... please fu--...” He whined. “I can’t, Corvo, _please_!”

Corvo took his hands from Isaac’s arms, cradled his neck and head with them, tender even while he insisted. “You can.”

“It’s … coarse,” Isaac complained.

“There’s nothing delicate about what I’m going to do to you,” Corvo said. “It’s rough and it’s _coarse_ and you need to show me you want it. If you want delicate I can tease you with my mouth and suck you until my jaw aches and you don’t have a single drop left in you. But you’ve been asking me for something else…”

He could almost feel Corvo’s mouth, with what his words evoked. His cock twitched and flexed between them, his aching balls tightened to his shaft. But Corvo was right. He wanted something different.

“Please…” Isaac said, his voice steady again, but small and submissive. “ _...fuck me._ ”

“Again.”

Isaac squirmed in protest, a surge of action under Corvo, but he gave in. “Please fuck me.”

“Louder, Isaac.”

“ _Fuck_ me! Corvo, please, enough! Take me, fuck me, give me your cock and fuck me hard…”

Corvo was off him in an instant, flipping him onto his stomach and pressing his palm between Isaac’s shoulder blades. “Stay,” he said in a voice that brooked no dissention.

Isaac lay still, listening to the sounds of Corvo moving behind him.

“Spread your legs for me,” Corvo said. 

Isaac obeyed.  
“I’m going to touch you,” Corvo said. “It’s going to feel a little clammy at first. Just be patient.”

Isaac felt Corvo spread open the cleft of his ass with one hand while the fingers of the other touched him. He could feel the lube on Corvo’s fingers, viscous and clammy as he’d been warned. Corvo’s touch was careful but firm, spreading wetness over him, spreading open the pucker of his anus and teasing at it.

Isaac tensed. It was strange, invasive, compromising… _coarse_ , just as Corvo had warned. But then Corvo’s free hand was on the small of his back, stroking him, and Corvo was hushing him again. “Easy, love, I’m here. I’m right here.” Corvo’s voice was gentle again, a warmth that melted him, and he let the tension in his body go.

The lube had warmed to his body’s heat. Corvo’s fingertips stroked across his entrance again, and Isaac focused on the sensations of it. There was pleasure there, not as direct as having his cock stroked but it was intriguing, tantalizing. He let himself flex open when Corvo spread him again, and was answered with the feeling of Corvo’s index finger slipping into him.

Isaac gasped.

“Tell me if there’s pain. If we take our time this doesn’t have to hurt.”

Isaac clutched at the pillow under his chin and shook his head. “No pain. I… It’s good. You can go further.”

Corvo’s finger slipped in deeper and then drew back out. His thumb replaced it, hooking into him and carefully twisting.

Isaac found himself lifting his hips into that touch. It set off a craving somewhere deeper in him. Again Corvo hushed him but there was a hint of amusement in his tone. “I’ll give you what you want. You’re almost ready now.”

And then he did. Corvo pressed two fingers into Isaac. He twisted his hand sharply, then thrust his fingers deeper, his thumb pressing against the smooth swell of skin behind his balls. Isaac moaned out loud, astonished, almost disbelieving. Corvo had found that craving that even Isaac couldn’t quite place. His fingertips were crooking forward against it, the core of him, the buried root of his cock.

Isaac rocked back against that touch and Corvo’s fingers found a rhythm. “This is where your pleasure sits,” Corvo murmured to him. “You’ve never felt it here before, have you?”

Isaac shook his head against the pillow again, words failing him. He looked back over his shoulder as well as he could manage, his gaze hazy and unfocused.

Corvo pulled his fingers out and Isaac felt bereft, but a moment later Corvo’s tip, blunt and thick, was resting against his hole. “If it hurts, tell me,” Corvo repeated. “We can start slow.”

It didn’t hurt. There was something Isaac might have called uncomfortable at first, and he felt himself stretch to accept Corvo, but it turned to a full feeling, intense but delicious. He felt a subtle pop, the rim of Corvo’s head pushing past his entrance. A puff of breath from Corvo’s mouth hit him between the shoulderblades. Isaac raised his hips, pressed up and back, urged Corvo to give him more. Corvo took his time, every slow thrust pressing deeper than the one before. Isaac moved with him, careful, receptive. Corvo’s fingers hooked around the bone of his hip, guiding him, urging him on.

He felt Corvo’s lips on his back, his hot breath. Corvo’s hips were flush against the curve of his rear. “You have all of me now,” Corvo murmured.

“Corvo…” It was all he could find to say. Isaac felt his body flex and slowly adjust to this welcome intrusion. His lover, arms around him, body against him and sex inside him.

“I know, love,” came the tender reply. “Just breathe. Tell me when you’re ready.”

Corvo covered Isaac’s hands with his, curled his fingers between Isaac’s. Isaac brought their clasped hands to his lips and kissed Corvo’s knuckles. “I’m ready.”

There were no more words while Corvo braced himself over Isaac and started to thrust. The quiet slap of skin against skin, the moans of indulgent pleasure Corvo tried to swallow, and Isaac’s hoarse panting as he lost himself to what he felt inside him.

It was new and strange. It built slowly, and however hard Isaac tried to grab after the tension, there was no rushing it. He could only accept, submit to the rhythm of Corvo’s thick cock driving against that place inside him where the fullness felt best.

Corvo’s thrusts staggered and turned rougher, and the man no longer tried to stifle the moans in his throat. They came rough and rich. And then, whispered like a desperate secret, “Isaac, I’m so close…”

“Don’t stop…” Isaac pleaded as urgently as he had when Corvo had demanded that he beg. His fists curled into the sheets. He _howled_. His body bucked, then buckled, limbs going slack while his sex twitched and throbbed. His climax spreading through him in waves -- tall breakers at high tide. He felt Corvo’s cock swell and pulse inside him, a counterpoint to his body’s own spasms, and he felt Corvo pressing his face against his back, moaning out loud.

Corvo’s cum was a warm flood inside him, leaking sluggishly from where their bodies joined. They lay still, sucking in the room’s humid air, their bodies almost uncomfortably warm against one another. But only almost.

When Corvo finally pulled free and rolled to Isaac’s side, Isaac stirred enough to throw a leg over Corvo’s hip and drape an arm over his shoulders. He gave Corvo a sleepy smile, opening his eyes a sliver to see Corvo smiling back.

“Was it everything you hoped for?” Corvo’s words were pleasantly slurred.

All the hard truths and painful words they’d traded seemed distant. They had each other, the blistering heat of passion and the warm glow that came after. A love so vast it made everything else small.

“All that and more.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't say I never did anything nice for you, thepresidentofhyperion


	42. Interlude 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile, in the Void...

Evander Nevrakis sat in front of the campfire they’d built, sucking grease from his fingers. It was their first meal in days, out of necessity. Fuel was nearly as scarce as food, especially given the tendency of fires within the void to turn to a cold, purple flame after an hour or so. Their time was nearly up.

There was still hope, as he told the others every night. They had a chance. But he knew they rallied to him because they had no other choices. Some had leapt into the Void, their final wails retreating far too slowly before it was swallowed by the fog. Others took their knives and cut deeply, trying to draw channels for the stone to spread. For one or two it was working. They would soon number among the Envisioned. For others, the only thing that had taken root was gangrene. Evander had put them out of their misery.

When they had found the Eye cold and truly dead, there had been panic. Their path out of the Void was closed to them, their power broken. They had found the entrance to the Ritual Hold collapsed as well, and from that Evander had drawn the obvious conclusion: their charge, the Outsider, was gone.

All was lost, the other scholars had said. But even in the face of disaster, Evander believed otherwise.

Certainly it hadn’t been an optimal venture. They had taken what resources they could, things they had brought into the naked Void or from the mirrored quarry, whichever parts they could still reach. They had made a makeshift cart and placed most of the Grand Praxic’s workshop into it, and together, Evander -- the High Theor of their Society -- and the Praxic, Cybele Dufreyne, had made their plan.

It was easier to go around the mountain than through it. The open Void was difficult to traverse, but the Praxic had a device that called the rocks, ordered them into a path. The principle was similar to the one used in the small gifts they gave their neophytes, but replicated in a grander scale. The Praxic, with no particular interest in naming the machine, simply called it the Fork. It was a pair of massive whale ribs, carved with runes and bracketed with iron, powered by whale oil tanks. It arced and crackled with violet lightning.

Even with that power the going had been slow. They had been spiralling downward for weeks, though in the Void, ‘down’ began to lose all meaning.

Evander was seeking the root of Shindaerrey Peak, hoping to excavate something no human had ever seen. Something one of his scholars had doubted even existed, shortly before he’d died.

The High Theor had little use for dissent in this time of trial.

They had reached the bottom of the unfathomably great mass of the Mountain, winding their way along it, an inconceivable monolith of black hanging in the endless Void. This was where they would search.

The Praxic had a device for that, too. It wasn’t nearly as grandiose as the Fork. It was cobbled together from the innards of two or three Abbey music boxes, their sound altered by blown glass tubes that had a delicate beauty Evander found atypical of Cybele’s work. “Form follows function,” she had told him when he had commented on it. 

By connecting the device to a shallow pan of water, Cybele was seeking irregularities in the substance of the Mountain. She had shown she could find fault lines, veins of silver… but what they were looking for was rarer still. Rare and impossibly precious.

Evander took up a dish of meat, holding the warm metal with a folded handkerchief. Cybele hadn’t come to the fire for her meal; she rarely did. She prefered to work. Enough of the stone threaded through her that she seemed to be less burdened by bodily needs than the rest of them, and more than once Evander had found himself jealous. To be so unfettered by lowly things… But that would come, in time. He was confident.

The Praxic had assistants moving the resonating device along the face of the mountain. There was a pattern established, a slow grid of progress, and while Cybele crouched over the rippling water she dictated notes to a small girl at her side.

This close to the search, he could feel the resonance as much as hear it. It crawled along his spine, scratched at his temples, rumbled through some uncomfortable space below his heart.

“Supper, Dufreyne,” Evander said.

“Unnecessary,” came the distracted answer as Cybele jerked the stump of her right arm in his direction. The prosthesis she had used had gone missing some days before the death of the Eye; she had a new one in progress but hadn’t yet completed it.

“Feed the child,” she said. 

The small Tyvian girl assisted the Praxic, as her prosthesis was missing and the fingers of her left hand were fusing into stone. The child’s fingers were nimble, her hands were steady, and she was silent. Cybele had told him she suited her needs quite adequately.

Evander crouched down on one knee and beckoned the girl. She looked at him with large, dark eyes, at the dish in her hand, and she did not move.

Cybele took the notes from the child with the claw of a hand she still had. “Eat, girl.” She gave her a heavy shove in Evander’s direction.

The girl stumbled towards him. She stood staring mutely down at the dish in Evander’s hands.

“Come, girl, it’s no use for you to starve.” Evander pressed into the meat with the side of a fork, lifted up a piece of it to offer the child. It glistened with rich fat.

The girl shrank away, eyes lowered to the ground.

Evander grabbed her chin, fingers squeezing her jaw. How could this child linger on the brink of starvation and still be so fussy? It wasn’t as though she could taste the food. Her tongue had been cut out when they’d bought her.

He forced the meat into the girl’s mouth and held it shut until she swallowed.

She coughed, struggled against his grip until he struck her face. Tears stood in her eyes.

“This is for your own good. We cannot afford to waste this, you understand? Refusing it means he died for nothing. You don’t want that, do you? Do you want it to all be for nothing?”

The child still wouldn’t look him in the eye.

“Do as you’re told,” Cybele said over her shoulder. Even her voice was changing, strange and cold, dry and remote.

The child shuddered and took the dish.

Good, Evander thought. The kidneys were rich, and the child had refused nearly every meal. This would keep her from starvation.

“Do not strike the child again, Nevrakis.” Cybele said almost absently. She watched her assistants move the resonating plates. “It is unnecessary.”

Evander could feel the sound, the vibrations. The low buzzing was swelling in his ears, the scratching at his temples blossomed into an itching in his teeth. On the ground beneath them tiny shards of Voidmatter shivered and danced. The entire mountain was ringing.

Evander raised his head as a glittering snow of obsidian drifted around them. He allowed himself a rare smile.

High Theor Evander Nevrakis did not consider himself an optimist, but a realist.

After all, most creatures have two eyes.


	43. Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Jessamine arrives in Karnaca. Corvo and Isaac have a choice to make.

They had one place where nobody could find them. The room behind the fireplace was small and bare and lit by two narrow slits in the back wall. It smelled like cigar smoke even when neither of them was smoking, but it was their place. Their favorite place, sometimes, while palace intrigue boiled around them, the Tower teeming like an anthill.

They were sitting beneath those narrow windows, Corvo with his back against the wall and Jessamine in his lap, in his arms, leaning against his chest with her head tucked under his chin. Her hair always smelled like the jasmine she was named for, and Corvo could never smell those flowers without thinking of her.

“How is Emily?” Jessamine’s voice was a sigh mixed with a yawn. They’d stolen a nap together, and a few sips of whiskey from a shared bottle.

“Precocious. Restless. You saw her this morning,” Corvo murmured.

“Feels like longer,” she answered.

“Go back to sleep. We have time.” Corvo swallowed. He missed her. But why would he miss her? They were always together, night and day.

But Jessamine shook her head against his chest. “You know we don’t.”

“Stay anyway. What’s a little dereliction of duty.” Why did his heart ache? Why did his throat feel too tight? All he knew was that he couldn’t let her go… and that he had to anyway. 

“We can’t stay like this forever, Corvo.”

“Why not?” His voice was breaking. Jessamine’s fingers were curling into the folds of his coat.

“Because I’m already gone,” she said. It was the voice of the Heart, distant and sad.

“Jess…”

When he woke in the pre-dawn hours her name was on his tongue, sitting there unspoken. I am broken, he thought. I am broken by your loss. I stand in ruins like a city without people, like my mother’s empty house, like a wrecked ship on the rocks…

Isaac was asleep beside him, on his stomach, his slender body half curled and the covers drawn up over his head. He thought of his lover’s usual dignity, his quiet mystique, and smiled at the contrast even as he tried to put his grief back in whatever quiet places he usually kept it. It was familiar, that contrast. Familiar, the feeling of waking up in bed beside another warm body.

But now he had something that grief brought him, trailing along like a kite on a string. He had the knowledge that what they had wouldn’t last forever. It was a palpable knowledge, tender as a bruise.

When he came out of his thoughts he realized Isaac was awake, his blankets pulled down just enough that he could watch Corvo with his hazel eyes.

“Your sadness is louder than the morning birds,” Isaac said. He turned the covers back, reaching for Corvo with one arm.

“I’m alright. It’s too early for the day to go bad on me yet.” Corvo smiled, and it wasn’t entirely forced. Isaac’s hair was a gorgeous mess, and he knew he was the only one who got to see it like that.

“Come here,” Isaac said. “Pretend I believe you if you want, but come here.”

Corvo sighed, but he did as Isaac asked. They had had a handful of quiet days to themselves, precious for more than just their rarity. And today, the Jessamine was going to make port, and Corvo’s time would cease to belong to just him and his lover. Under the blankets, Isaac held him with a strength that still surprised Corvo. 

“How long do we have?” Isaac’s voice had a wistfulness to it.

“It’s not even dawn yet. Maybe three hours.”

“I’m going to meet you at the docks.”

Corvo considered. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“I want to sleep in with you like we did yesterday,” Isaac said. “But we can’t always have what we want.”

Corvo huffed in amusement. “That isn’t quite what I meant.”

Isaac drew back enough to regard Corvo’s face with sleepy eyes. He waited while Corvo gathered his thoughts.

“The moment you’re seen with me,” Corvo began, “your life will change. If you meet me at the docks… if you so much as shake my hand you’ll be in silvergraphs in every newspaper across the Isles. If you embrace me? You’ll be the subject of every gossip column. Are you ready to begin life as a public figure?”

Isaac’s lips twitched into a subdued smile. “I’m used to being talked about, Corvo.”

“But is it what you want?” Corvo’s eyes, his tone, were utterly serious.

Isaac looked back at him with tender fascination. He took the time to think it over. “What about you? What do you think of being in silvergraphs and gossip columns with me?”

That brought a bit of amusement into Corvo’s face again. That seemed to give Isaac a kind of satisfaction. “There’s the alternative… hiding you, hiding _us_ , from day to day, year to year…” His sigh was heavy. “Like Jessamine all over again. I’m tired even thinking about it.”

“Then let’s get our story straight,” Isaac said, his small smile returning.

Corvo blinked. It wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting. “Are you sure?”

Isaac drew closer to him again, their legs tangled up with one another’s. He kissed Corvo with his lush mouth, and Corvo felt weightless for an instant, suspended in the space between heartbeats. He leaned his head in and kissed back.

“The cult could find you,” Corvo murmured when the kiss was done.

“They may already know where I am. Seeing me on the arm of a legendary swordsman and the most powerful man in the Empire could be… very discouraging.”

“It’s still a gamble,” Corvo said.

“Every choice is,” Isaac answered. “I’m content with this one.”

Corvo looked at the man in his arms and considered anew. It was true; they wouldn’t know the outcome, could barely even know the risks. But what they did know was their own wishes and wants. And when he thought of the gentry back in Dunwall tittering over the scandal of the Royal Protector and his mysterious lover, and not least of all how much Emily would want to plug her ears at all of it…

“Alright. I’m going to get you an Agency badge. You’re Thirteen, as of now.”

Isaac smirked at that. There was no Thirteen, there never was. There were the top twelve -- the numbers on the clock -- and then agents were given other designations. Corvo had made him a secret even the secret-keepers didn’t know. It was ingenious… and it fit. It would explain why he had no other papers, no records of his name or his origins. And the badge would easily supplant his need for any of them.

“I suppose I’ve been here in Karnaca, rooting out any last vestiges of Delilah’s coup and keeping an eye on the repentant Duke Abele.”

“You were instrumental in restoring Empress Emily Kaldwin to the throne,” Corvo said with a slanted smile. It wasn’t a lie.

“But what should we tell the public at large?” Isaac asked thoughtfully.

Corvo hmmmed to himself. “You’re knowledgeable and well-spoken, so… you’re a scholar.”

“A historian. I was with the Royal Conservatory before its extended closure.”

“You’re from…” Corvo considered. “Driscol. Middle class?”

Isaac shook his head. “Son of a dock worker. Parents have been dead for years. I sold the family home for enough money to travel and study.”

“But how did we meet?”

Isaac smirked. “I’ve been writing your biography. Our correspondence turned intimate.”

It hung together very well, on the whole. “You’re good at this. But I suppose…” Corvo trailed off, frowning in thought. “...no, that’s not true. You’ve never been much for lying.”

Isaac looked at him with pure delight in his eyes. It was as unexpected as it was disarming. “You see that now,” he said, his voice soft. “I can’t claim virtue. People lie when they have something at stake. I had already lost all there was to lose.”

Corvo rolled Isaac onto his back, pinned him beneath his own weight. He kissed him. His neck was a constant temptation but Corvo avoided it, all too aware of the way Isaac would go still and tense when he touched him there. He kissed lower instead, where his collarbones converged, the subtle dip there that his coat collar used to frame invitingly. “And you say _my_ sadness is too loud.”

“It’s hard to break the habit of several lifetimes,” Isaac answered, sighing into Corvo’s hair.

“Sometimes I wonder,” Corvo said, “what I would’ve done differently if I’d known the truth about you from the start.”

“Your grief was too fresh and raw for you to have loved me, and I would’ve had little use for your pity. You know I don’t resent your suspicion, I hope.” Isaac had his hands in Corvo’s hair, and the feeling of gentle fingers combing along his scalp was something Corvo hadn’t known he’d missed this badly. His weight rested even more upon Isaac’s chest and stomach as his muscles slackened, his body eased.

“I wish...” Corvo sighed, a hint of frustration in the sound. “I’m not sure what it is I regret. Thinking of you so alone when I could’ve done something about it…”

Isaac’s fingers went on carding through Corvo’s hair. “You’re doing something about it now,” he said. 

Corvo had little more to say. He stayed in place, his body resting on Isaac, tranquil and adrift on the slow motions of their breathing. He thought of the day he’d found himself with his lips against the back of his left hand and realized he was in love.

Hours passed and the sun rose. They rose and dressed together, worked out the details of Isaac’s false history over their morning coffee. The time came and Corvo left for the Palace District docks, travelling by rooftops and alleyways while Isaac made the same trip along the city streets.

Corvo snuck aboard the ship in time to debark down the steep gangplank, surrounded by a retinue of diplomats and bodyguards. The docks thronged with silvergraphers and newsmen, a further crowd of spectators corralled further back. Corvo waded into the press and they parted for him, while Isaac shouldered his way between nobles and palace dignitaries.

When they met, they kissed over a red velvet rope, breathless and full of longing as if they’d been apart for weeks. The flashes of a hundred cameras fired all around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm running late. I squandered my free time on Frostpunk and Dad of War. [I drew Reese btw.](http://cinnabarbarian.tumblr.com/image/173621277842)


	44. Chapter 36 *special*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corvo takes Isaac on an impromptu date.

There were meetings then, affairs of state, and even though business was pressing, the Duke gave Corvo a welcome befitting royalty. While Isaac wasn’t invited into the council chambers, he was welcomed at the banquet table. Sitting at Corvo’s left hand, he ate modestly and drank perhaps too much wine. The rest of the Duke’s council were present: Aramis Stilton, Lucia Pastor, Alexandria Hypatia, and a few other functionaries. Isaac was surprised initially that relatively few nobles were present, but when he considered the real sympathies of the ‘Duke’, it made sense. It was promising.

At the end of the evening meal, the Duke offered Corvo seats at the Opera the following night, which Corvo accepted, and lodging in the Grand Palace, which Corvo politely declined. He had been looking forward to seeing the streets he’d known in his youth, and his ‘friend’ had a modest apartment in the Battista District.

They took the carriage rails home. It was Isaac’s first time in a carriage, and Corvo had to pull him back when he’d unthinkingly followed the impulse to lean out into the wind, wide eyed at the speed they were moving and enrapt by the view.

The evening ended with the two of them in each other’s arms, in their familiar bed, and Isaac found that reassuring. Corvo’s duties would change the life they’d been living, the one that even in a mere half a week Isaac had found himself settling into comfortably. He had a name, a home, a life, a love. He intended to cling to all of them with every bit of strength he had.

They slept late into the next morning. The day’s only obligation was to attend the opera the Duke had invited them to, so they languished together in bed, then in the bath, and then at the breakfast table with a shared pot of coffee and some thick porridge.

Billie came to check in on them in the afternoon. “Look who’s front page news,” she said, tossing a copy of the Karnaca Gazette to Isaac as she hung her jacket on a peg by the door. Isaac wasn’t sure what to think of the silvergraph he saw, Corvo and himself kissing deeply, his own hands curled into fists, holding the front of Corvo’s coat. He didn’t remember pulling him in so fiercely.

“At least it’s below the fold,” Isaac said. The larger silvergraph, the main headline, was simply about the Jessamine’s arrival. 

Corvo looked at the photo of them with his eyebrows lifting and a hint of smugness in his smile. “Do you have any scissors? I’m keeping this,” he said.

Isaac found the kitchen shears and offered them with a shrug.

“You’re not worried about being recognized?” Billie asked.

“We discussed that. I think Corvo might be a deterrent to anyone wishing me harm.”

Billie looked doubtful. “You’re willing to bet your life on that?” She shook her head, deflating a bit with a sigh. “I guess you already have.”

“It was my choice to make. My life to live,” Isaac said.

“I just want you to keep on living it,” Billie grumbled.

Corvo talked with her a while about the disposition of their stolen silver, and how she and Reese planned to liquidate and distribute it now that the Jessamine was in port to provide a cover story. After Billie went on her way, the sun was low in the sky, the late afternoon light was turning golden, and it was time to dress.

They both put on the finest suits they had. Corvo wore impeccably fitted dark trousers and a white jacket that was almost more of a doublet. Isaac wore his deep indigo waistcoat, a black hip-length jacket, and a fine white shirt, his collars turned up as was usual. When they stepped out the door, Corvo took his dark coat with them, but draped it on his shoulders like a cloak, holding it in place with a length of braided cord that usually looped decoratively from one shoulder.

That was when Isaac realized that the heavy belts Corvo accented his outfit with concealed a portion of his usual armaments, and the coat concealed the rest.

“So, what Opera is it that we’re attending tonight?” Isaac asked as they stepped out into a clear, crisp autumn evening.

Corvo had to pull the tickets from his pocket to check. “‘The Bride of Lammermoor,” he said, frowning.

“What is it about?” Isaac thought it was an innocent enough question until he saw Corvo looking at him bemusedly.

“You don’t know?”

Isaac gave him a flat look. “I was never much for theater, Corvo.”

Corvo considered his answer, and Isaac felt relieved that he didn’t need to explain himself. After centuries spent as a captive audience to all the human suffering the world could sustain, he’d had little interest in drama.

“You seemed excited about it last night,” Corvo said, pausing on their way down the street. Battista’s typically disused carriage station was only half a block further downhill. The district’s foot traffic was slowing down, workers returning to their homes for dinner, others on their way to pubs in groups of two or three. A small gaggle of men crouched on a building’s wide stoop, betting on a dice game.

“I was a little drunk last night,” Isaac admitted. “What is it about, though? Now that we’ve established I’m not omniscient.”

Corvo looked down at the tickets in his hand and tucked them back into his jacket. “Fucked if I know,” he said.

Corvo looked off towards the bay for a moment, with a look on his face Isaac recognised. The look he wore when he was planning something. Isaac watched and said nothing, and after a moment Corvo turned to him with a furtive smile that was again just a touch smug.

“I’m sure it’s quite a spectacle. Shame we’re not going to make it,” Corvo said.

Isaac tilted his head. “We’re not?”

“Not with the carriage rails broken down. The Duke will understand.”

“The carriage rails--”

Corvo was already stepping away from him, reaching into his coat. A few steps, and he hurled something at the gated platform at the end of the block.

A grenade.

Isaac winced and covered his ears. Corvo turned, his coat billowing, a blazing explosion behind him as he grinned. Around them people stopped, cried out in alarm and scattered.

“...are out of commission, I see,” Isaac finished. Corvo always was full of surprises.

Corvo took him by the hand, still grinning. “We should run.”

They were off down an alleyway just as the first guards arrived on the scene. Isaac kept up with Corvo, exhilarated. They dashed across one street, down another alley, into a small, secluded garden built around one of the massive trees that grew on the Shindaerrey slopes. Corvo backed Isaac against a stone wall and kissed him fiercely. Isaac kissed back with his hands in Corvo’s hair.

Then they stood chest to chest, catching their breath from the kiss as much as the run. “Let’s have dinner,” Corvo said.

Isaac blinked at him. “There’s not much in the pantry but--”

“Have dinner,” Corvo said. “Not cook dinner. I know a place. Did you think I’d leave you dressed up with no place to go?”

Isaac shrugged. While he’d learned a few simple things, like the porridge they’d had that morning, he knew he wasn’t much of a cook. And Corvo, by his own admission, mostly knew how to clean and cook fish, from a boyhood spent fishing when he wasn’t fighting.

Corvo led him through another alley and down a narrow side street, choosing a few pedestrian staircases that brought them further up the slopes and away from the constant hum of the windmills. The ‘place’ Corvo had mentioned turned out to be a bistro with colorful awnings and walls covered with flowering vines.

The greeter’s eyes widened for an instant, the only sign that she clearly recognized their famous patron before she escorted them to a semicircular booth in one corner, next to a window that overlooked the bay. The greeter lit candles for them as they took their seats, Corvo sliding into the booth not across from Isaac but beside him. Underneath the table, he caught one of Isaac’s ankles between his.

Isaac looked around and began to feel his heart hammering in his chest. This wasn’t expedience. This wasn’t just a hot meal. 

This was a date.

Corvo ordered wine after only a glance at the wine list. He had a poise to him that reminded Isaac distantly of how he’d stood behind Emily’s throne, confident, in his element to a degree even those born to nobility couldn’t be. He’d earned his way to where he stood, and Emily’s reign was founded on the foundation he’d laid during the plague. His voice had a low, understated ease to it, and its roughness made it rich rather than harsh. His beard was trimmed, his hair wind-tossed in a way that somehow made it better than perfect, and in that white jacket his shoulders looked broad and square and his waist lean.

As for Corvo’s eyes? They looked like dark honey in the candlelight, seductively warm as they focused on him. Just as the server at the side of the table was also focused on him. He’d been discussing the daily specials with Corvo and Isaac realized as he snapped out of his reverie that he’d missed every word of it.

When Isaac opened his mouth to find no words forthcoming, Corvo stepped in as elegantly as a dancer in a waltz. “What do you have that’s vegetarian?”

Isaac listened that time as the waiter explained their offerings, and settled on stuffed bell peppers with goat cheese. Corvo ordered a loaf of sweet bread for them to share while they waited, and then the waiter departed, leaving Isaac free to contemplate the way Corvo was holding his hand under the table.

“I came here with my mother after I won the Blade Verbena. It’s one of the oldest restaurants in Karnaca. Been here since the district was founded. But I suppose…”

“...that I would know?” Isaac shrugged. “I don’t mind hearing it. My mind is cluttered with knowledge, and even I lose track of things from time to time.”

Corvo’s hand gave his a slow squeeze, warm, broader than his own. Isaac looked out at the bay, the city slopes, the golden light deepening in color to match the flame of the candle on their table. In the far distance, he thought he could see the hazy plume of a whale’s spout, just the smallest lick of mist on the horizon.

The wine arrived, something red and bold. Corvo rose from his seat to take the bottle and pour for them both, filling Isaac’s glass before his own. Isaac knew little about wine beyond that he enjoyed it, but this one seemed heady and strong. Or maybe it was being hip to hip with Corvo that made him feel so warm.

They settled into silence while Isaac nibbled on warm, fresh bread and realized how unaccustomed he was to making conversation. He noticed Corvo stealing glances at him while he sipped his wine, and wondered if he was feeling the same awkwardness, also fumbling for words to fill the silence.

It turned out to be only partially that. “You look…” Corvo paused, almost bashful, a hint of a slanted smile on his face. “...Words don’t really do you justice, right now. None that I can find, anyway. You look wonderful. Forgive me if you catch me staring.”

Isaac felt his heart pound. “I might say the same. Ever since you put that jacket on I’ve been thinking of taking it off you.”

Corvo’s bashful look turned into a grin. “You’re insatiable, you know that?”

“I’m making up for lost time.” 

“Fair enough.” Corvo paused, cleared his throat, and changed the subject to something more appropriate for the dinner table. “I’m going to speak to the Duke about letting you sit in on council meetings. It’s easier than repeating everything to you later, and I’m used to having an aide regardless.”

Isaac arched his eyebrows at that. “You’re giving me Jameson Curnow’s job? And here I thought you liked me.”

Corvo was chagrined. He leaned his forehead on the heel of his hand for a moment. “I need to have a long heart to heart with Jameson when I get back to Dunwall,” he grumbled. “I didn’t mean to presume. I wanted you to know… I’ll make you welcome. Anywhere I go. And if you want your voice heard, I’m listening.”

“I’ll give it thought,” Isaac said. Everything seemed softer in the candlelight, from the careworn lines of Corvo’s face to the ravages of time and solitude that Isaac wore in subtler ways. “It’s not hard to see the troubles of the world, poverty and ignorance like open sores on the face of what people call society. But knowing the cause is harder, and the cure? That’s harder still.”

“You’ve seen more than I can even imagine. You must have some insight.”

“Some. Maybe more than most. But we both know good advice is a bitter pill.”

Corvo shrugged. “Karnaca’s running short of options. And it isn’t the usual gaggle of oligarchs and pearl-clutchers we’re dealing with.”

Isaac found himself with a touch of a smile on his lips. “To my _great_ surprise, I think I share your optimism.”

Corvo returned the smile and lifted his glass. “To optimism, then.”

Isaac’s smile widened. It still felt a bit like his own face was betraying him in these moments, but when it was with someone like Corvo or Billie he’d ceased to reprimand it. It was a losing battle, for one thing, to try and hide the tenderness he felt. And for another, they’d earned so much more than just his trust. 

“To being pleasantly surprised,” he said, and clinked glasses with Corvo.

Their meal arrived and they ate together, watching the deepening twilight through the window. Their conversation flowed more casually, and between the two of them they easily finished the bottle of wine. When they left the bistro the stars were out, and Isaac felt light but still steady on his feet. Even so, he welcomed the offer of Corvo’s arm.

“The night’s still young, even if I’m not,” Corvo said, and he took them down quiet but well-lit streets into the heart of the district. Isaac could hear the low roar of conversations and the clamor of laughter well before they reached the doors of the pub Corvo led them to. All that noise was interwoven with music; fiddles, guitars, an accordion. Tambourines and cymbals and drums. Inside the pub, tables were shoved aside to make room to dance in front of the band’s low stage.

The crowd at the pub spilled out onto the street, people chasing away the evening chill with liquor and beer. The dancers inside were red-faced and smiling, men here and there with their shirts soaked front and back from fresh sweat. The music had a beat that was hard to resist, and as they slipped into a booth Isaac tapped his foot along to it while Corvo leaned across the table to shout a drink order into a waitress’s ear.

Corvo shed his coat and tossed it onto the booth’s tufted bench. He took Isaac’s jacket and folded it with a bit more care, laying it down as well.

“Dance with me,” Corvo said.

Isaac felt his face flush. He stole a glance at the dancefloor, the stomping and clapping and general carousing that seemed so alien to him.

“I’ll teach you,” Corvo said over the noise and the music. “There’s not much to know.”

Isaac gave a small nod, and Corvo caught his wrist, pulling him out to the dance floor, eking out some space for them. Corvo clapped his hands, stomped his foot with the song’s rhythm, and linked arms with Isaac, wheeling them both around. Isaac didn’t so much shed his self-consciousness as have it tossed to the winds as another dancer caught his arm and he found himself swept the other way.

All the dancers traded partners constantly; men and women, young and old. Each person Isaac danced with helped him through his moments of confusion, giving him encouraging smiles when they realized this was his first time. If he was out of place, the people he met seemed to take it as a sign to welcome him all the more warmly. His misgivings fell away to be trampled under dancing feet.

Even after Corvo left the floor, Isaac stayed for dance after dance, learning the steps and the tunes, stopping by their table now and then for a drink of ale or a quick kiss. When the band began to put their instruments away, it was nearly midnight, and Isaac had shed his waistcoat and mostly opened his shirt. Corvo’s gaze lingered on him and he realized how he must look, with rosy cheeks and mussed, sweat-damp hair.

The patrons were leaving the pub in pairs and small groups, and they, too, stepped out into the crisp, clear night hand in hand.

Isaac was smiling unreservedly. He was drunk; he knew he was, though he thought it might be on more than just wine and strong ale.

“How did I do?” Corvo gave Isaac’s knuckles a slow squeeze.

Isaac looked up at him as he threaded his fingers with Corvo’s. “Given how satisfied with yourself you look, I don’t think you need me to answer that question.”

“Your opinion is the one that matters, though,” Corvo countered. 

The stoop of their building waited a few doors ahead. With Corvo’s presence known to the public at large, they hadn’t been able to avoid having guards posted at the doors. What had surprised Isaac was the way Corvo seemed no more comfortable with their presence than he was himself. By most counts, Corvo _was_ a guardsman of a certain sort. But then again, the coup was fresh in his memory. A uniform was no guarantee of where anyone’s true loyalty lay.

Isaac stopped, drawing Corvo back against the building beside them, where a billboard obscured them a bit. “Before I answer, I’m curious. Why the need to woo what’s already won?”

Corvo gave him an odd look. “Love’s not something you win. It’s something that’s given. This was just that. Just a gift.”

Isaac stared into his eyes, his heart feeling too big for his chest. He reached up, his hand on the back of Corvo’s neck to draw him down into a kiss. When their lips met, he took his time. With Corvo’s hands on his back he felt like the ground under his feet could shudder and crumble away and neither of them would budge; he’d found something more unshakeable than the foundations of the earth.

“It’s a perfect gift,” Isaac said. “Things I wouldn’t have known to ask for, things I didn’t know I wanted. Things given from the heart, unstintingly, with a generosity that humbles.”

“You’re humble enough to begin with.”

Isaac smiled. “Let me be humble. Let me be small enough to shelter in your arms, and I have everything I want in this world.”

Corvo seized him then. The kiss he gave was fiercely deep and just as slow to end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for rgb-hex in thanks for so many wonderful drawings. _Now_ you can thank me.


	45. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :) :) :)

No one had ever needed to give Billie any formal appointment as Isaac’s bodyguard. It was simply assumed, though when she considered their history she had been the one to assume it. She could only muster a fond sort of irritation at the fact.

Isaac argued that he hardly needed her to babysit him when Corvo was away. Corvo had assigned armed guards, regardless of how uncomfortable they made everyone. Uncomfortable enough on Billie’s part that she debated sneaking in through an upstairs window, but it would be better if the guards knew she was in the building. 

They knew her by now, and she knew them; one of them black and stern-looking, the other a big, broad Moreleyan with scars at the corners of his mouth -- somebody who had a history with the gangs in Wynnedown. They both wore the livery of the Dunwall city watch rather than the Serkonan Grand Guard. The scarred man nodded to her while his partner opened the door and let her pass.

Upstairs, Isaac opened the door for her, his hair still wet from the bath, a towel around his shoulders, and a calm and easy smile on his face. He smiled more as time went on, especially since Corvo had arrived, but it was still a rare thing, something she was slowly getting used to.

“You busy?” Billie asked as she stepped inside.

“Not even remotely. Coffee?”

Billie shrugged. “Since you’re offering.” She kept her jacket on. They had things to discuss but she wasn’t sure how long their talk would be.

“Corvo offered to appoint me as his aide. I’ve been trying to decide if I have the patience for it.”

Billie raised her eyebrow as she took a seat at the breakfast table. “It would look like rampant nepotism, you do realize that.”

“I’m not sure he cares much about appearances these days.”

“ _I’m_ not sure he should be so cavalier. Or you.” Billie frowned. “...You could do a lot of good for this city, though. Maybe that’s more important.”

Isaac came to the table with a pot of coffee, fresh and steaming. His smile had fled, leaving a more thoughtful, solemn look behind. “I’m not sure I’m ready to shoulder the weight of even this small part of the world again. I’ve enjoyed having only my own problems to struggle with. This feels like volunteering to have someone dump a nest of vipers onto my lap.”

Billie snorted at that. “Sounds about right.”

“Any advice, dear friend?”

Billie smiled. “Try it. If you don’t feel like offering your own ideas, just take notes. It’s only until Corvo takes you back to Dunwall.” There was a pang of regret as she said that. “Besides, if you’re with him at the Grand Palace, I can go back to sleeping late.”

Isaac pushed a full mug of coffee to Billie’s side of the table, and poured another for himself. He looked pensive as he sat down. “Have you made your decision, then?”

Her answer was a frustrated sigh. “I’m still… thinking. Reese says she’ll be with me no matter what I choose, but… you saying you feel like it’s asking to have a world of problems just dumped into your lap? I feel the same. And then I keep thinking…”

“...that maybe you really are the one who can fix them.”

Billie looked Isaac in the eye and nodded.

“It’s strange,” he said. “Now that I have choices of my own, making them is harder than I thought.”

“Do you ever miss having the long view?”

Isaac pursed his lips. “Sometimes.” He took a drink from his mug. “Not enough to genuinely want it back.”

“Can I do that? See the future the way you could?”

Isaac nodded. “Possible futures. The same way you look into hollows, look into a moment, a choice, and you’ll see it unfurl around you, different threads spooling off. Sometimes they only re-converge, nothing of consequence coming from any path. Other times they splay out like a spiderweb. But it isn’t a thing to be used lightly.”

Billie considered scolding Isaac for holding out on her this long. Foresight could’ve made so many things easier. But she knew enough to know that it was like Isaac said, as double-edged as the knife she carried. What would it mean to know how she would die? How Reese would die, or could die? To witness a hundred nightmares and just a handful of garden paths through a treacherous unknown?

And finally, what would it mean for it to then be her burden, her responsibility to choose one of those paths no matter the cost.

“To see every outcome is to find your choices whittled away to nothing,” Isaac continued. There was sympathy in his eyes. He could tell she was just realizing it now. “You deserve better than to be a slave to fate.”

Billie shivered.

“This took a turn I didn’t intend.” He reached across the table, put his hand on her own. “What brings you here today? You haven’t said.”

“The witches,” Billie said. “Fidelia left a note with Reese. The others… I guess they’re not really a coven anymore? Anyway, they want to meet with us. The leader said it was urgent.”

“Urgent for whom, I wonder?” There was a flat skepticism in Isaac’s tone. “But we may as well follow through. Tonight, do you think?”

“I’ll let Corvo know what we’re up to. Then I’ll track down Fidelia and we can get her to introduce us.”

Isaac nodded. His look had turned mild and calm again, a bit distant. When Billie thought about, maybe dreamy was a better description.

“Things are good with you?” She asked over the rim of her mug.

He cracked a smile, small, even mischievous. “Very good.”

“There’s a rumor going around that Corvo destroyed the carriage station down the road.”

“They say there’s truth in every rumor. ”

Billie laughed, her forehead dropping to the palm of her hand. She scratched at the edges of her Eye. “I’m sure he had a good reason.”

“Neither of us really wanted to go to the opera.” Isaac shrugged. “But we couldn’t be rude to the Duke, so…”

“He grenaded the carriage station because you wanted to stay home and bone.”

Isaac didn’t fluster as much as she’d expected him to. “We didn’t, though.” His blush wasn’t embarrassment, it was something more coy. “We went to dinner.”

Billie beamed at him. “He took you on a date? Your _first date?”_

Isaac flashed a shy grin before he reigned it in. “Dinner and then dancing. He ordered wine, he held my hand…” The blush on his cheeks deepened, but it was pure delight.

“Fuck. I should’ve shadowed you. This must have been cuter than a basket of kittens. I have _got_ to tell Reese.”

Isaac finally covered his face with his hands. “When I’m not present. I don’t think I can take this a second time.”

“You had a good time?” Billie scratched at the side of her Eye again.

“I smiled so much my face hurt.”

Billie laughed out loud, still rubbing at the itch on her face. Isaac gave her an odd look.

“It’s tingling a little. It’s happened before…” But not often. It had tingled and itched like this as she’d approached the Shindaerrey North Quarry weeks ago. She saw color draining from Isaac’s already pale face. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

He was rising from his chair, reaching for her. The tingling was worse, her ears were starting to ring. "No,” he whispered. “No, no, it’s impossible…”

He was afraid. Billie wasn’t sure if he was afraid for himself, for her, or for the both of them, and it made her throat close up and her blood turn to ice. “ _What_ , Isaac? What’s happening to-- nnghhhh!” She winced, groaning in pain, sudden and sharp. It was like the way her head had hurt before he’d given her the Eye, when she had been both maimed and whole.

“Brace yourself,” Isaac told her. She felt him drawing her into his arms. “Hold onto me. It’s going to hurt.”

It did. The pain came again, stabbing, searing. Her vision swam, both mortal and preternatural. The world was a warping, twisting haze of red. The pain grew, her good eye watering with involuntary tears. She sobbed through clenched teeth. Isaac was stroking her hair, pressing her face against his shoulder, but soon there was nothing but pain. She thought her skull would split from it, and then she wished it would.

Then the ringing in her ears was suddenly gone.

The agony reached a crescendo. As Billie slipped from consciousness, slumping into her friend’s arms, she heard a deafening crack. It was like the most terrible peel of thunder imaginable. It was like a miner’s pick splitting a rock, multiplied by a hundred thousand. The building was shaking around them, and Isaac curled around her to protect her body with his own. The ceiling was crumbling, the floor was buckling, the walls caving in as the ground heaved.

In the distance, above the shuddering city of Karnaca, Shindaerrey Peak split in two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go...


	46. Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Duke's Inner Circle had their hands full even before disaster struck. Lucia Pastor finds Corvo's priorities dubious at best.

Duke Luca Abele had thought of his Grand Palace not as a personal indulgence, but a monument. The palace it had replaced had stood for generations, a naval fortress from the days of the city’s founding that had outlived the wars it had been built for. Luca’s palace, as such, was not only built, but over-built, its fine white walls a sheath over a structure of steel and stone.

Yet even so, as a crack stretched its way across the library’s glass floor, Armando stepped briskly away towards the dais where his desk sat. His mask, the Duke’s persona of boredom and braggadocio, had crumbled away during the quake. At least the only ones present had been the few already in the know -- the new inner circle of Karnaca’s leadership.

And, of course, Corvo Attano.

There had been a silence after the quake had ended, as if the shattering sound the whole city had heard had deafened the world. Then the chamber doors had burst open, panicked guards lunging in, desperate for the reassurance of some orders.

Armando was giving them as best he could. Corvo had seen his share of panic and frenzy, times it was hard enough to keep his own head, and he wondered if pretending to know what to do was any easier for a man with long years of practice at pretending. Armando rallied enough to project a certain confidence, even with the color gone from his face.

What Corvo saw in the faces of the other two counselors was worse by far. Lucia Pastor looked grim, lips pressed tight, while Aramis Stilton was paper white and almost blank with shock. Corvo dragged a chair over to him while Lucia urged him into it and took one of his shaking hands.

“The miners,” he rasped. “The mines…”

Lucia Pastor’s stoney visage threatened to crumble. She squeezed Stilton’s hand until her knuckles were white and his thick fingers were turning blue.

Corvo struggled after words for just an instant, but succumbed. There were none, could be none. They all knew the mines couldn’t have survived a quake that strong, as they stood there in their shared shock and horror, plaster dust sprinkling down on them from tiny fissures in the ceiling.

There would be thousands dead. Thousands more bereaved, orphaned, homeless. And Karnaca’s greatest source of wealth lay buried in the rubble.

“We need to get to Battista,” Corvo heard himself say.

Lucia Pastor turned her face to him, eyes focused on him like a great owl on its prey. “I’m getting sick of you saying the right thing for the wrong reasons, Lord Protector. We’re going to Battista, but your _catamite_ is not a priority for anyone in this city but you.”

Rage came on like a flash, a furnace blast. Corvo felt his face redden, and he glared back at Lucia. Anger, for Corvo, always came with adrenaline, his body feeling loose and ready to act, so much that it was more of a challenge not to. His fingers flexed at his side and he fought back against the impulse to reach for his sword or his pistol.

“Going to hit me?” Lucia said. “You think I’m afraid of you? That earthquake might have been Karnaca’s last gasp and you’re still thinking with your other head.”

“You have _no idea_ wh--”

“This isn’t the time for bickering!” Armando stepped in as his officers hurried from the room. “Settle your grievances later, we have work to do.” Armando pulled a silver cigar case from his jacket. He clipped a cigar and lit it with a shaking hand, but handed it to Aramis, who took with with a bewildered expression.

“What’s the plan?” Corvo asked. Even with fury burning in his throat like bile, he knew Armando was right. But as he swallowed down that anger, there was something rising up from beneath it. Something even more uncomfortable.

“I’m opening the palace to the wounded and the homeless. We’ll take on as many as we can, and set up tents in the gardens for the overflow, but it’s still not going to be enough. I have lieutenants looking for more options, and runners getting the word out. I’m ordering the Guard to focus on rescue efforts, and I sent another runner to Addermire for Doctor Hypatia. We’re going to need her.”

Over the palace’s loudspeakers, Corvo heard one of the Duke’s lieutenants echoing much of what Armando had said. A glance down through the glass floor of the library and Corvo could already see a group of servants straining to lift the banquet tables and lean them against a wall.

Aramis Stilton puffed on the cigar he’d been given. The shock on his face was slowly giving way to the same grim determination Lucia had. “We need to get to Battista and see what the damage is. The miners are going to need leadership. We can’t just let the whole district roll over and die.”

“If Battista dies, Karnaca goes with it,” Armando said. “It’s the beating heart of this city, whatever the gentry think. I’ll give you everything we can, everything we’ve got to restore the mines, there’s no other option. But… even before this, Luca bled the city dry.”

Three pairs of expectant eyes fell on Corvo.

“I’ll send a telegram north. But as I’ve said, the Parliament--”

“So nothing from Dunwall, what a surprise.” Lucia Pastor crossed her arms.

“I have silver in Clemente,” Corvo snarled. “It’s not from Dunwall and it’s not enough, but it’s yours. It would be easier if you wanted Emily to rule the way your last Duke did, but I think you know where that road leads.”

Lucia’s glare subsided with the rebuke. However expedient it was, autocracy was nothing the Empire needed. She sighed, lowering her head and pinching the bridge of her nose. “Alright, at least that’s _something_.”

Corvo leaned over Armando’s desk, drafting his telegram. “I can draw up promissory notes on my own accounts. What I mean is… let the money take care of itself. We’ll find a way. Right now we have a city of _people_ to take care of. They need food, shelter, clean water, and doctors. The Grand Guard is about to have its hands busy and the Abbey is going to do nothing but stir the pot in the meanwhile. If people were on the verge of rioting over the Michaels Bank, they’re going to be arming themselves and looting, and retaliation from the Guard could turn this city into a battlefield. What _all of us_ need to do is make sure people are picking up shovels and not torches. We need to direct that anger elsewhere, fight that fear.”

Lucia Pastor nodded along, no less stoney-faced. “To do that… Aramis and I need to get back to Battista.”

“Then we’re in agreement,” Corvo said.

“I never said that,” Lucia answered. “ _Aramis and I_ need to get to Battista. _You_ could do a lot more here, getting some of the upper crust to roll up their sleeves and chip in.”

“Do you think they listen to a tradesman’s son?”

“They listen to the Royal Protector.”

Corvo scowled. She had a point, and he hated it. But something inside him felt like it was in freefall, his heart beating half a step too fast, panic clutching it like a shaking fist.

“Lucia, considering your history you might show a bit of sympathy,” Aramis said, rising and passing his cigar back to Armando with a small nod of thanks. “Not to mention the children.”

Lucia Pastor shrugged broadly. “It’s only… even after the Coup, he finally comes down here, and is it to help? Is it to grab a bucket and start bailing out a ship that’s been taking on water for years? No. It’s to see his secret paramor and whisk him away back to Dunwall.” Her tone dripped with venom.

“And yet, he _is_ helping,” Aramis said.

Lucia made a frustrated noise and paced away from them. “I _know_ that, but seeing everybody treating him like some prince on a white horse--”

Corvo’s anger flared again, fierce and terrible. “You don’t have any say in what I choose to do or how I conduct my affairs. None. And I stopped caring about your opinion the moment you took that tone when speaking about my lover. Did you think I’d be cowed? Ashamed? If you could sit across the banquet table from him for a night and still come away thinking he’s a pretty face and nothing more, the shame’s all on you. 

“You are right about one thing. I came to Karnaca for him. But if I didn’t care about this city or anyone in it, or my daughter and this empire, I would’ve taken him aboard my ship and left the same day. Or at the least I would’ve stayed beside him, and I would know in this moment whether he was trapped, or injured, or worse. Right now? I wish to the Void and back I’d been more selfish. You can take my help or leave it, but I’m going to Battista.”

With a scowl on his face that sent the head servant scrambling out of his path, Corvo stalked out of the library alone.

It was only after his feet had carried him to the stairs that he gave some thought to where he was going. The others were probably right about the carriage rails. They’d be warped or outright broken, where they even had power. A skiff would be his best bet at getting across the bay quickly, so he made his way down, through the cellars, the servant doors, and down further, past the lower gardens.

He was too low to have any view of the city. The Palace in general had very few city-facing views, perhaps emblematic of how Luca Abele had turned his back on the people of Karnaca. Corvo couldn’t see the source, but he smelled greasy smoke on the air. The daylight was dimmer, the sky looked dull and cast-over with dust. He heard a small spatter of distant gunfire, deceptively muted pops carried on the wind.

Standing at the island’s tiny dock Corvo saw a pair of skiffs resting on wet, gravelly sand, still tied at the pier. The water had receded even below the low tide mark, leaving matted seaweed and crusts of barnacles exposed to the sunlight. He took a moment to consider dragging a skiff to the water, regardless of how uneasy he felt about what the bay was doing and where that water was going. But the Battista shoreline was a cliff-face. The closest the skiff could get was likely to be a sewer tunnel, and with the water retreating so far, the sewer outlets would all be higher than the water level.

It wouldn’t be worth the effort. Corvo wheeled to climb the garden path again, up among the hedged terraces that surrounded the Palace. The carriage station was unpowered; only obvious at a glance because Lucia Pastor and Aramis Stilton were standing on them while they argued with a harried-looking Guard officer.

“And I’m telling you it’s tantamount to suicide,” the officer said. “There are fires all over town, I have runners telling me that the canals are running dry, Campo Seta’s been barricaded by the Abbey, and there are riots and looters everywhere. If you’d just _wait--_ ”

“Corvo!” Aramis Stilton noticed him mounting the stairs and waved him over. Lucia looked over her shoulder at him and looked away with a frown, likely as sour at the sight of him as he felt towards her.

“This may be the answer to our troubles,” Stilton said as Corvo loped over. When Corvo gave him a questioning look, Stilton continued, “The Major won’t let us leave the grounds without an armed escort. I think the Royal Protector himself will do in a pinch.”

“Since I’m headed your way,” Corvo said with a shrug. There was just a hint of archness in the look he gave Stilton.

Lucia Pastor pursed her lips, but raised no objection. The guardswoman stepped aside, seeming relieved.

“Alright,” the officer said, “You’ve got your escort, Ms. Pastor, Mr. Stilton. And good luck -- you’re going to need it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the long delay. I have a lot to juggle right now, both with this story and life in general. Everything's good, I'm just very much not lacking work to do.


	47. Chapter 39

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quincy Ogden and Arlo Murphy of the Dunwall Tower guard are out of their element in Karnaca. Quincy isn't sure if they might also be out of their depth.

Quincy Ogden had known something was up from the very beginning. He hadn’t been sure if he was out of his depth or not, as one improbable thing piled onto another over the past several weeks. All he was certain of was that he was in the thick of something he didn’t understand.

His taciturn partner Arlo gave little indication whether he felt the same. He was even less inclined to ask questions than to make chitchat, but now and again Quincy thought he saw a quirk to his scarred mouth, a furrow in his bristling eyebrows. 

They were Guardsmen, though. They had both been hand-picked for the assignment by the Royal Protector himself. And as guardsmen, they kept their eyes open and did as they were told.

Since the coup, there weren’t a lot of veterans left among the Dunwall City Watch or the Tower Guard. More than half the Guard had turned along with Mortimer Ramsey and executed most of the remainder. Then the witches had whittled away at the turncoats, caring little for whose side they were on. If a man’s loyalty could be bought, could it stay bought? Delilah’s coven had trusted no one but their own.

For those loyal guardsmen and women who survived, either through resourcefulness or dumb luck, it was a moment of opportunity that was bleakened with tragedy, corroded with hardship. Quincy was a commoner, young, and by most measures fairly green, but after the Coup was brought down, he’d found himself promoted to lieutenant. 

Then he’d been brought on for this assignment. 

It had been bizarre from the outset. Corvo Attano had briefed the pair of them himself; they were to guard his quarters on the Jessamine, which was, for all the likely monotony, a fairly respectable assignment. But they were to conceal the fact that the Lord Protector wasn’t in them. The Royal Protector wasn’t going to be aboard the Jessamine at all. They would be guarding an empty room, and making sure no one discovered it was empty.

Lord Attano assured them he’d be in Karnaca. Even as he’d briefed them it was clear he had been in the midst of rushed preparations to depart. But for some reason, he needed to be in the city before anyone knew he was there. Quincy had held his tongue, however many questions he’d had. It wasn’t a Guard’s place to ask questions. It was wiser to remember that the man he was taking orders from was also the Royal Spymaster.

They’d done their duty, for the span of the voyage. The Royal Protector’s meals were eaten, his bedclothes tossed in the morning, and the door to his cabin closed and guarded. And when they’d reached the harbor and made port, somehow he was there when they lowered the gangplank, walking out of the cabin they’d guarded with neither of them the wiser as to how he’d snuck in in the first place.

That was when Quincy had begun to believe some of the stories about the man.

Things only got stranger from there.

There was the mysterious paramour. The Royal Protector’s secret lover -- a secret very well kept, until that kiss at the docks. Along with that unexpected development came new orders, a new assignment. They’d be guarding _him._ They’d been given the first floor apartment as their new living quarters in the city, and one, the other, or both of them watched the man’s front door at all hours of the day and night. 

Then, they’d been briefed that this young man no one had ever seen or heard of, this man they still knew nothing about beyond his ties to Lord Attano, was a close associate with a former assassin, Billie Lurk.

Quincy thought she was better looking than her posters had shown -- and they’d been nice posters. He could guiltily admit to himself that it made this pile of bizarre coincidences a little easier to accept, getting to see her come by a couple times a day. Sometimes she said hello, and her voice was like the warm embers of a fire, like a lingering hum from the strings of a viola. She wasn’t like any woman he’d ever met. Maybe before they left the city, he’d told himself, he’d pluck up the nerve to tell her so.

She’d have to be a very singular kind of person to be pardoned for what she’d done. For Lord Attano, of all people, to even be speaking to her, let alone collaborating with her on… something. That was Quincy’s theory, at least. 

It was also possible that whatever was brewing underneath this assortment of coincidences was so dire that even a vendetta as deep and bloody as the one between Lord Attano and the Whalers could be thrown aside.

Quincy found that easier to believe than some serendipitous impulse to forgive and forget. He had few complaints about the Royal Protector, but he was still inclined to believe that one didn’t become the most powerful man in the Empire by being nice.

He’d spend long shifts keeping watch at night turning it over in his mind. There was something big underneath all this, something momentous. Something like a shadow under the surface of the water, massive but unseen. Even more than what his good sense was telling him, his gut told him something was coming.

So somehow, when a deafening crack thundered across the city and the earth beneath his and Arlo’s feet heaved and shuddered, Quincy Ogden wasn’t entirely surprised.

What surprised him more was the speed at which deep cracks raced up the walls of the building he was guarding. Arlo pulled him away with a strong hand on his shoulder as the old tenement started to collapse. Quincy stumbled dumbly backwards into the street, watching as a cloud of dust rose over the rubble.

Then it passed. The most terrifying sound followed by the deepest silence.

They didn’t need to discuss. Quincy and Arlo climbed the rubble side by side without breaking the quiet that settled after the quake, and they began to dig. Whether there was hope or not, whether this would be a fruitful search, it didn’t matter. This was the one thing they could do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still writing. Thank you for your patience. <3


	48. Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billie and Isaac face the aftershocks.

Everything was cast in red. 

Around her, buildings shifted, rising and falling like waves. Billie could see them crumble, settle into dust, and then spring back into form, as if every possibility existed at once, overlapping, entangled. Waves of flux tore through everything, reminding her so much of the strangeness in the quarry. The only thing fixed and stable was Shindaerrey Peak, and she saw it standing above the shifting city, cleft apart not just at its top but down to its root, down beyond the treeline.

Red light poured from the gap like a spray of blood. It hurt to look at. Her head throbbed with pain. She tried to shut her eyes but her Eye was lidless, and the light seared her vision until she wished the stone upon her face could shed tears.

So she turned away. 

She saw herself laying at her own feet, Isaac curled around her with her head held to his chest, the two of them half-buried in cracked roof tiles and broken bricks. For a moment, two of him existed; one unconscious, another dead, his skull crushed, the dark hair at his temple just a mass of blood.

She recoiled from that possibility and she saw it vanish like smoke in a hard wind. Had _she_ done that? Her will, and nothing more?

Or was this only a dream?

She crouched down over her own body, over Isaac, and she saw him looking at her with one half-opened eye.

_Do you understand now? What they do, what they’ve done?_

Billie heard his voice, but his lips didn’t move.

“I don’t know. Am I dreaming? Is this real?”

_From the Void, there is no difference. Dreams rest like heavy fog upon a sea of possibilities, from which to pluck one singular thing and enthrone it as reality._

“Is that what happened?” Billie heard a quaver in her own voice. Life was too fragile. 

_You chose._

“I can’t let you be hurt. I can’t let you end here, like this.”

She saw his lips twitch in what seemed a sleepy smile, his eye still fixed on her.

_Moments like this are malleable, and I have some wiles of my own, Billie Lurk. But I thank you for the impulse, from the bottom of this neverending well of debt you’ve dug for me._

Billie could hear the fond, wry note in his tone. She reached down with her stone right hand, saw it flickering like the rest of her vision as she scruffed his hair. He closed his eye.

_There isn’t much time. Wake, now._

She felt herself drawn back into her body in a rush, a surge of pulse and warmth. She could feel Isaac’s breath against her hair, hear his heart beating in his chest. They both stirred at the same time, struggling to shift off the debris on top of them, only to find there were other hands helping them.

“They’re alive!” said one of them. “They’re moving. Careful, there’s glass.”

Billie felt the rubble around her shudder and tremble. She saw large hands pause in their work of shifting broken bricks and chunks of collapsed roofing. An aftershock. There was a low, pained moan from Isaac but he was moving too, rounding his back to push up against the wreckage that had settled over them. A pair of big, scarred hands dug through plaster and concrete to help him.

Billie found her footing first. The two guards Corvo had stationed at their door were helping them. Their faces were familiar by now, although Billie didn’t know their names. The Moreleyan guard helped Isaac to stand, holding on when he saw how he was unsteady on his feet, the side of his face streaked with blood.

“Looks like you took a brick to the side of the head,” the black man said, wearing a thoughtful frown. “Let’s get off this heap, find you someplace safe to wait this out. Find you a doctor.”

“One in particular,” Isaac said, his words sleepy and slurred. When the guards gave him a questioning look, he fumbled for a moment, then added, “Reese. You have to …” his words escaped him again. He stumbled forward, bracing himself with his hands on Billie’s shoulders. She tried to help guide him down the pile of rubble that remained of their home.

“Let’s just work on getting you someplace safe,” Billie said.

“You don’t understand,” Isaac said. Another pause as his focus swam while he tried to complete his thought. “Addermire,” he said, urgent.

“That’s right, she went to Addermire today,” Billie said mildly. There were fresh fissures in the street’s pavers when they reached them. She could smell smoke, she realized as the Moreleyan guardsman helped her sit Isaac down on a crumbling wall. 

Isaac rubbed his eyes. “The sea will rise and take it,” he said. “The ferries are marooned, the tide’s gone out and left them. And when it returns it will wash the rocks clean of everything they’ve built..”

Billie felt a stab of terror. A great wave. As much as Isaac was struggling now, he’d been lucid in the Void, or the dream or whatever vision she’d had while she’d been unconscious. Even now as she looked up to Shindaerrey she felt her head throb with aftershocks of its own.

“The carriage rails aren’t going to be much better,” she said. Billie wheeled and looked down toward the bay. Even from the slopes of Battista she could see how far the waterline had dropped. She began to shake her head. “I’ll never make it in time. Even with the Void I’m not that fast, I can’t just run the rails like gymnast! I have to find a boa--”

Isaac was holding her wrist. “Moments like this are malleable,” he repeated. His eyes looked clearer, sharper. “Use the Knife. Cut a passage. Go to Reese.”

There wasn’t time to argue, to tell him how impossible that sounded, to demand better tutelage. There was only time to act, to try. Billie stepped away from Isaac and the two guardsmen, both of whom were hanging back and watching with perplexed expressions, exchanging looks.

She reached out first with her left hand and she focused her Eye. Her head complained, but it wasn’t prohibitive. ‘The warp and weft of time,’ he’d said once, and she could see it if she tried. Time and space, reality and possibility, the rippling surface of an ocean. She focused and her palm wasn’t spread against empty air, but pressed against the moment, the world, _reality_ , like a gauzy veil.

She called the Knife to her hand, and she swung. Existence itself pulled apart like cobwebbing. She saw the Addermire dock in front of her, through an impossible hole in the air. Her heart was pounding, and she no longer knew if it was terror or exhilaration. Billie lunged through the tear. 

She wasn’t going to lose her love today.


End file.
